St. Louis-based startup Amptify, which has developed software to provide rehabilitation for those with hearing loss, has named a new CEO.
The startup said Thursday it has promoted President and Chief Operating Officer Chris Cardinal to the CEO role. He replaces founder Nancy Tye-Murray, who will remain Amptify’s board chair and shift to the role of chief scientific officer.
"Appointing Chris as CEO was the obvious next step in our company's evolution," said Tye-Murray. “Historically, the hearing healthcare industry has been slow-to-change and content to conduct business-as-usual. Chris's thinking is futuristic and visionary. He has helped changed my colleagues' conception of what is possible if we embrace technology and embrace a more entrepreneurial approach.”
Founded in 2015 and spun out of Washington University School of Medicine’s Audiovisual Speech Perception Laboratory, Amptify has created software that is designed to provide rehabilitation for those with hearing loss. Its digital platform offers coaching, curricula and video games for auditory training.
Cardinal joined Amptify in 2019 with an entrepreneurial background. He formerly was founder and CEO of Welltodo, a St. Louis-based health startup that created a mobile app to manage migraine headaches. He sold Welltodo in 2018 to Charlotte-based SensorRX Inc.
In a news release, Amptify said Cardinal has helped grow the startup by bringing its technology to audiologists and launching its clinical research arm, Amptify Labs, to help other companies in their own usability studies and clinical trials.
Cardinal said that Amptify starting allowing audiologists use its digital platform in the third quarter of 2021 and has since had about 450 audiologists sign up. He said that comes as the startup wraps up its research and development phase for the digital platform and hasn’t yet marketed the product to health care providers, instead using word of mouth to add to its roster of users.
“Our focus has been on testing and creating more value for audiologists. With this, we were able to form partnerships with some of the largest audiologists and provider networks in the US and have fetched an endorsement from the Academy of Doctors of Audiology. We are just starting to build on those relationships,” Cardinal said.
Cardinal said Amptify, which has 12 employees, plans to begin fundraising in early 2023, seeking $2.3 million in capital to help finance its growth blueprint. Fundraising will be one of his “primary initiatives” as he takes over as CEO, Cardinal said.
