Callyope - LLM revolutionising psychiatric monitoring

In France over 600,000 people live with schizophrenia, most however see a psychiatrist only every four to six weeks. In the interval between appointments, early deterioration can go undetected. Treatment molecules have existed since the 1970s, whilst monitoring infrastructure has not kept pace. The structural gap is observational rather than therapeutic.

Callyope (France, founded 2023) was co-founded by Martin Denais (CEO), Rachid Riad, and Xuan-Nga Cao, a team with research affiliations at Oxford, Harvard, and leading European psychiatric hospitals. The company built a speech foundation model trained specifically on psychiatric data rather than adapted from a general-purpose system. Patients use a smartphone application for voice journals, symptom self-reports, or passive speech analysis during calls with designated caregivers. The model processes hundreds of clinically validated speech biomarkers alongside sensor data and medical records.

Clinicians gain continuous symptom scores between consultations and AI-drafted clinical documents, including hospitalisation reports, referral letters, and case summaries. Additionally, monitoring frequency and symptom questionnaires are tailored by patient, allowing individualised protocols without additional administrative load.

Seven clinical studies are under way across more than 1,000 patients, including a strategic R&D partnership with GHU Paris, one of Europe's largest psychiatric institutions. Callyope won the Prix des Psychiatres at Encéphale 2023 and was selected for Google's AI for Health programme alongside 22 startups globally. The company raised €2.2 million in seed funding co-led by 360 Capital and Bpifrance Digital Venture, with participation from No Label Ventures.

Sources: Callyope, TechCrunch, Google for Startups, Crunchbase, Yahoo News.

Founders: Martin Denais, Rachid Riad, Xuan-Nga Cao.