A startup with a powerhouse team and pedigree is looking to combine Big Data, machine learning and a new treatment method to change how clinicians and health insurers manage patients with mental health issues.
HealthRhythms, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, publicly launched Wednesday after a year and a half in stealth mode. The company looks to collect data from everyday routines, then apply advanced analytics to measure and understand behaviorial rhythms.
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“By having a more complete picture of an individual through continuous measurement, we can significantly improve the lives of all patients,” CEO and co-founder Carlos Rodarte said in a statement. “Identifying mental health signals in a way that enables early intervention opportunity not only helps patients, but also reduces the financial strain insurance companies and health systems face.”
Carlos Rodarte previously headed the wearables division at PatientsLikeMe.
Other HealthRhythms co-founders include:
- Medical Director Dr. David Kupfer, who chaired the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-5 task force. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is considered the bible of mental health diagnosis and treatment.
- Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Ellen Frank, who developed a treatment method called interpersonal social rhythm therapy (IPSRT). It’s based on understanding each patient’s biological and social rhythms. Frank and Kupfer worked together at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
- Tanzeem Choudhury, a computer scientist from Cornell University, who led development of a mobile app called MoodRhythm, which won the $100,000 Heritage Open mHealth ChallengePrize in 2013.
HealthRhythms is incorporating MoodRhythm and IPSRT into its portfolio, according to an article published this week in UnDark, a digital publication loosely affiliated with Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The company said that 30 percent of Americans with a chronic disease also have a mental health ailment. HealthRhythms said on its blog:
The unfortunate reality is that mental health is considered a separate compartment, as something different from physical health. But mental health is an integral element of the totality of our health. HealthRhythms helps healthcare systems approach mental health as such.
HealthRhythms said it has been testing its system and generating scientific evidence for a year and a half with several, unspecified health insurers and providers. The company said its current partners will apply the technology to at least 10,000 patients.
While HealthRhythms didn’t disclose its partners in its introductory press release, UnDark had one name. Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire reportedly will soon begin tracking depression-related symptoms of patients with other chronic diseases, using a self-developed app called ImagineCare. UnDark said that HealthRhythms now owns ImagineCare.
Here’s a 2013 video explaining MoodRhythm.
Photo: Flickr user Jerry Meaden
