Telling.ai

Telling.ai develops artificial intelligence software analyzing voice and breath sounds to assess lung health. Its core offering is a telehealth respiratory monitoring platform, identifying vocal and respiratory biomarkers indicative of medical conditions. This technology provides objective insights into lung function, aiding remote management of respiratory well-being.

The company was founded on the insight that human voice and breath contain subtle patterns indicative of physiological states. Recognizing the critical need for accessible, non-invasive health monitoring, founders established Telling.ai. This initiative leverages AI for precise, real-time physiological assessment, translating complex vocal patterns into actionable health data.

Telling.ai serves individuals managing chronic lung conditions, like COPD and asthma, with convenient remote monitoring. The platform also extends its AI voice analytics to enterprise clients for health and wellness applications. The company’s vision is to enhance proactive health management and early detection of respiratory issues, making advanced diagnostic support broadly accessible.

High-Level Overview

Telling.ai is a Pittsburgh-based startup developing AI-powered voice analytics software focused on monitoring lung health through speech analysis. It targets individuals at risk for respiratory conditions like COPD, asthma, shortness of breath, and COVID-19, as well as enterprise clients, by detecting unique auditory signatures of issues such as mucus, obstruction, congestion, inflammation, and scarring in breath and speech.[1][4] The platform extracts dozens of undetectable features to enable real-time feedback, data denoising, and timely interventions, aiming to reduce the 1.5 million annual U.S. Emergency Department visits and 800,000 hospitalizations from COPD alone, where nearly 20% of acute exacerbation patients are readmitted within 30 days.[4]

Origin Story

Limited public details exist on Telling.ai's founders or exact founding year, but the company operates from physical offices in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, emphasizing an onsite workspace.[1] Its emergence aligns with rising demand for non-invasive respiratory monitoring post-COVID, leveraging speech—a complex process involving lungs, airways, nerves, and muscles—as a diagnostic tool with medical signatures for infections and diseases.[4] Early focus appears on real-world applications, building a framework for capturing respiratory sounds outside clinical settings, which has positioned it for healthcare impact amid growing AI healthtech adoption.[1][4]

Core Differentiators

• Voice-Based Lung Monitoring: Analyzes speech and breath for subtle indicators of respiratory issues undetectable by the human ear, powering algorithms for conditions like COPD acute exacerbations.[4]
• Real-World Framework: Unique real-time feedback and denoising optimize data quality in everyday settings, unlike traditional methods limited to clinics.[4]
• Enterprise Scalability: Builds AI voice analytics for broad client use, serving 47 million at-risk Americans to prevent costly hospitalizations.[1][4]
• Preventive Focus: Targets high-impact outcomes, such as reducing readmissions, through feature extraction from dozens of audio signals.[4]

Role in the Broader Tech Landscape

Telling.ai rides the AI healthtech wave, capitalizing on voice AI's non-invasive potential amid post-pandemic respiratory awareness and aging populations vulnerable to COPD and asthma. Timing is ideal as AI analytics advance in detecting subclinical signals, aligning with market forces like rising healthcare costs—COPD drives massive ED and hospital burdens—and demand for remote monitoring to cut readmissions.[4] It influences the ecosystem by pioneering speech as a vital sign, potentially expanding to other diseases, and complements enterprise tools in logistics, healthtech, and BI sectors hiring similar AI talent.[1]

Quick Take & Future Outlook

Telling.ai is poised to scale its voice analytics from niche respiratory monitoring to broader AI diagnostics, fueled by improving algorithms and real-world data. Trends like wearable integration, multimodal AI (combining voice with wearables), and regulatory nods for AI health tools will shape its path, amplifying preventive care amid chronic disease epidemics. Its influence may grow by partnering with telehealth giants, evolving from Pittsburgh innovator to key player in reducing U.S. healthcare spend—echoing its core mission to enable timely interventions through everyday speech.[4]