Federal Grant Award Summary

Auspex Medix, LLC received a $305,923 Project Grant award from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) under the Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders program (CFDA 93.173), effective July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027. The award funds development of SATE (Speech Annotation and Transcription Enhancer), an artificial intelligence-powered platform designed to automate Language Sample Analysis (LSA) for speech-language pathologists. SATE delivers multi-layer speech analysis including word- and phoneme-level transcription, C-unit segmentation, phonetic analysis with mispronunciation detection, maze identification, morpheme and syllable analysis, and grammar evaluation. The platform provides interactive reports with dynamic visualization and real-time editing capabilities to streamline clinical workflows.

Phase I activities focus on validating technical performance on typical and disordered speech across diverse linguistic accents and dialects using proprietary and public corpora datasets, targeting 0.8 sensitivity and specificity thresholds. The project includes participatory usability studies with 20 speech-language pathologists and heuristic evaluation by eight human-computer interaction experts to assess adoption feasibility. Success metrics encompass robust annotation accuracy, strong usability ratings, and preliminary evidence of financial viability. By automating manual annotation processes that currently require 7-8 minutes per minute of speech, SATE aims to address significant workflow bottlenecks and workforce strain affecting the $4.62 billion speech therapy market.