A research-and-development lab building emotionAI and peer-support technology - founded on a simple, human question: are you okay today?
In a technology industry obsessed with speed and productivity, Transhuman Inc. set out to work on something far harder to quantify: human emotion. Founded in 2014 by Amanda Johnstone and neuroscientist Dr. Roy Sugarman, the company describes itself as a global research-and-development laboratory for "mental health and emotionAI" - a place where neuroscience, AI ethics, and human behaviour are treated as a single problem rather than three separate ones.
The company's origin is personal. Johnstone, who grew up in Launceston, Tasmania, had lost too many friends to suicide. That loss became a mission. Rather than building another wellness app that measured steps or sleep, she wanted technology that helped people simply stay connected to the people who could catch them on a bad day.
The result was Be A Looper - a free daily check-in app that let users keep up to five chosen people "in the loop." Each day, users rated how they were doing on a scale of zero to ten and could quietly flag when they needed help. The design was almost defiantly simple, and that simplicity is exactly why it worked across languages and borders.
Over eight years, Be A Looper operated in 87 countries. Around 20,000 people used it to flag suicidal feelings and were connected to peer support. It was recognised as a GSMA Global Mobile Award finalist and featured by Singularity University. In January 2025, citing rising global infrastructure costs, the company retired the free app from all app stores - but its reach had already changed how thousands of people checked in on one another.
Mental-health support is often delayed until a crisis. Transhuman's approach is prevention through connection - small, daily, low-friction check-ins that keep people tethered to a trusted circle, and emotion-aware tools that help technology respond to how humans actually feel.
Individuals seeking daily peer support (used across 87 countries), plus organizations exploring emotion-aware wellbeing, employee engagement, and telehealth. EmotionAI research is positioned for enterprise, entertainment, and defense partners.
Where many rivals lean on AI chatbots, Be A Looper kept humans in the loop - real peers, not simulated ones. And the company puts AI ethics and neuroscience at the foundation of its research rather than treating them as an afterthought.
A free daily mental-health check-in and peer-support app. Stay "in the loop" with up to five chosen people anywhere in the world, rate your day 0-10, and flag when you need help. Operated in 87 countries; retired from app stores January 2025.
Proprietary research into emotion recognition and emotional communication - including work toward a new ".emotion" file format for protected emotional health data, and connecting human emotion with the Internet of Things.
An organizing idea for the company's work: extending the connectivity of IoT to human emotion and physiology, so that cognitive and emotional communication can evolve alongside the technology it runs on.
Transhuman runs as an R&D lab with two faces. Its flagship consumer app was offered free to the public (B2C), while its EmotionAI technologies are positioned for enterprise, entertainment, and defense partnerships (B2B), plus organizational deployments for employee wellbeing and telehealth. The company sits inside the fast-growing digital mental-health market, adjacent to affective-computing players building emotion-aware software.
Competitive alternatives include digital mood-tracking and mental-health apps such as Wysa, Woebot, Daylio, Sanvello, and Moodpath, alongside emotion-AI firms like Affectiva and Cogito. Transhuman's differentiator is its human-to-human check-in model paired with an explicit ethics-first stance on emotion data.
Technology entrepreneur from Tasmania. TIME Next Generation Leader (2019), CEO Magazine Startup Executive of the Year (2020), LinkedIn Top Voice of AI. Co-founded a retail chain at 17; later worked in youth suicide prevention before founding Transhuman.
Neuroscientist and clinical psychologist who co-founded the company in 2014, anchoring its research in brain science and human behaviour.
Around nine senior leaders spanning artificial intelligence, information security, IoT, finance, and commercialization across Australia, the USA, and beyond.
Expertise concentrates where mental health meets machine intelligence: neuroscience, affective computing, mobile engineering, and AI ethics. That blend is what lets a small team - roughly eight people - punch far above its weight in reach.
"Be A Looper is a world-first daily mental-health check-in and peer-support app - to keep you in the loop with five people, anywhere, globally."
Amanda Johnstone and Dr. Roy Sugarman launch the mental-health and emotionAI company (Social Health Innovations, Inc.).
The daily check-in and peer-support app debuts on iOS and Android.
Named a GSMA Global Mobile Award finalist; company raises a reported $1.8M Series A.
Johnstone recognised by TIME for global leadership in suicide prevention.
The CEO Magazine names Johnstone 2020 Startup Executive of the Year; app featured by Singularity University.
The free app is removed from app stores after eight years, citing infrastructure costs.
It is a mental-health and emotionAI research and development lab building technologies that connect human emotion with mobile, AI, and the Internet of Things - best known for the Be A Looper peer-support app.
It was founded in 2014 by Amanda Johnstone (Founding CEO) and Dr. Roy Sugarman, a neuroscientist.
A free daily mental-health check-in app that lets you stay "in the loop" with up to five chosen people anywhere in the world. It operated in 87 countries before being removed from app stores in January 2025.
Transhuman's proprietary research into emotion recognition and emotional communication, including a proposed ".emotion" file format for protected emotional health data.
No. As of January 1, 2025, the free app was taken down from all app stores due to rising global infrastructure costs, after eight years of service.