There are a whopping 64,142 people currently living with dementia in Ireland. With age being the leading risk factor for dementia, this number is expected to rise alongside population ageing to 150,131 by 2045. Dementia describes a group of symptoms that affect memory, thinking, and social abilities severely enough to interfere with daily life.
Among its many forms, Alzheimer’s disease is the most common, accounting for 60–70 per cent of dementia cases worldwide.
With millions of people and families impacted globally, early and accurate diagnosis has never been more critical.
MemoryTell is a digital health tool that uses speech-based biomarkers to support the early detection of dementia. Instead of relying on lengthy memory tests or medical imaging, it analyses short recordings of a person speaking — looking at patterns in language, rhythm, pauses, and acoustics that research shows can signal cognitive decline.
I spoke to Corrina Grimes to learn all about it.
Turning a research breakthrough into a clinical tool
Grimes started in health and social care 25 years ago as a clinician, and then moved into policy and commissioning. Parallel to that, in 2017, she became an Atlantic Fellow at the Global Brain Health Institute, affiliated with Trinity College Dublin and UCSF in San Francisco.
That’s when she became interested in brain health and how to reduce the scale and impact of dementia through a life-course approach, and where she met Adolfo García, a neuroscientist who spent 15 years researching how speech can be used as a biomarker. Garcia is an internationally recognised neuroscientist with 200+ publications and a global authority in speech biomarkers and brain health, and he has already developed a tool called TELL — “Toolkit to Examine Life-Like Language”.
The duo joined forces with Fernando Johann, an engineer and serial entrepreneur with two successful exits, venture capital experience, and experience scaling tech to international markets to co-found MemoryTell, to take the technology from the lab to frontline services in Europe.
MemoryTell’s real-time speech analysis supports dementia diagnosis
While in relatively early stages, MemoryTell is a web-based AI platform that records, transcribes, and analyses a person’s speech and provides a real-time report to support clinicians in diagnosing and monitoring dementia. MemoryTell’s approach makes analysis objective.
The AI compares a person’s speech against a dataset of 13,000 clinically coded records — labelled with disease status and validated in clinical practice, plus healthy volunteers.
A 10-minute, non-invasive assessment designed for primary care
A person engages in a short conversation or performs structured speech tasks (e.g. picture description, story-retelling, spontaneous speech) that are recorded. Advanced algorithms analyse the recording.
They extract a large number of acoustic features (pauses, speed, tone, prosody, silence duration, jitter, etc.) and linguistic features (lexical diversity, syntactic complexity, fluency/disfluency, phrase structure, word usage, etc.).
The speech is compared against a validated database of prior speech samples from people with known clinical status (healthy, MCI, dementia).
Using machine-learning or statistical classifiers (or, in some newer approaches, deep learning), the system estimates the likelihood that the speech sample corresponds to cognitive impairment, or flags patterns indicative of early signs of neurodegenerative disease.
The output is packaged into a real-time result/report that clinicians can view. Over time, repeated assessments allow tracking of changes in speech biomarkers — useful to monitor disease progression, cognitive decline, or possibly responses to interventions/therapies.
MemoryTell slots into primary care with fast, consistent dementia assessment
“It doesn’t diagnose, but it provides a proposed classification that helps clinicians,” explained Grimes.
According to Grimes:
“Our first use case focuses on people who present to their GP with symptoms and are then referred for assessment.
Providing an alternative to invasive assessments Across Europe, the diagnostic pathway varies — in some countries, initial assessments happen in primary care, while in others they’re carried out in specialist memory clinics — but MemoryTell is designed to slot naturally into the primary-care stage because it offers a quick, non-invasive 10-minute assessment with real-time, objective scoring.”
It's an approach that contrasts with today’s common methods, which typically rely on pen-and-paper psychometric tests such as the ACE-III, alongside clinical conversations, multidisciplinary meetings, functional assessments, and, when needed, further diagnostics like MRI, lumbar puncture, or other scans.
“Further, it provides longitudinal tracking — something our systems lack today. Speech biomarkers can objectively track disease progression or the efficacy of new treatments over time.”
It can also be used to plan other interventions — including social care — as conditions progress. It’s an objective, consistent way to document change.”
And, unlike other tests, results are instant. The healthcare provider receives a real-time PDF or API-delivered report. There’s no waiting period.
MemoryTell is currently developing validation studies, which will assist in determining whether (and how) the tool assists with:
- Screening,
- Prioritising waiting lists.
- Shortening diagnostic timelines.
“It won’t replace other tests, but it can be used earlier in the pathway, and it’s faster than standard care,” detailed Grimes.
Momentum builds after winning Catalyst Invent 2025
MemoryTell has been received positively from healthcare providers and clinicians, policymakers, and government — “you don’t usually get that 3D level of support,” admits Grimes.
“Investors have also been extremely positive. Being part of the Global Brain Health Institute also brings credibility, and we have strong institutional letters of support."
In October 2025, MemoryTell won big in the Catalyst Invent startup competition, winning the bio breakthrough category and the overall category, which has generated a lot of momentum.
Further, Grimes asserts that “a lot of people have been personally impacted by dementia, so they understand the mission: shifting from invasive, subjective tests to something faster, more dignified, and more objective.”
Once it obtains CE marking, MemoryTell will be a software-as-a-service medical device. The first customers will be public sector primary care and memory clinics, then the private sector. “Many startups go private first, but for us, the mission is rooted in public services,” shared Grimes.
“I have 25 years’ experience working across health systems — policy, commissioning, service redesign — so I understand the implementation challenges from inside the system.”
From here, MemoryTell’s priorities focus on completing clinical validation studies, advancing its regulatory strategy, building a robust quality-management system, securing CE marking, forming partnerships across Europe, and applying for targeted European grants to support further development and deployment.
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