Don Wright joins us this week to talk about Clarigent, and their new product, Clarity. Clarity gives clinicians an important new tool, based on AI technology, to track suicide risk and mental health outcomes.

Don has spent over 30 years in the healthcare and informatics space. Prior to Clarigent Health, he led Assurex Health, which grew to over 500 employees and was acquired in 2016 by Myriad Genetics for $225 million. When Don left Assurex after the transition period, he wanted to continue working in the mental health field, and to build another company that helped people.

Lack of funding and other factors including stigma have caused mental health to lag behind other areas of medical practice when it comes to integrating technology and science. In 2018, he established Clarigent Health with the goal of bringing science to mental health. The core technology builds on foundational research conducted at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center led by Dr. John Pestian and Dr. Tracy Glauser. Don’s co-founder, Bill Haynes had previously worked with Don, John and Tracy during the Assurex days, including Assurex sponsoring some of the research that now constitutes the core technology at Clarigent.

Although Don has worked in and advocated for mental healthcare for a long time, three years ago this purpose became more deeply personal. His son Justin died by suicide just as Clarigent was developing the commercial version of the suicide prevention technology. The memory of Justin’s life has made this suicide prevention work a more personal mission for Don and the entire team.

Darin and Jeff are honored to have Don on The Voice Box, and Cobalt Speech is happy to support Clarigent with speech technology.