It may seem like there is an unending sea of mental health-focused startups in the digital health world, but the ones that make themselves stand out are still doing a fine job of securing capital. Philadelphia-based NeuroFlow is an example.
On Thursday, the startup announced that it had raised $25 million in a growth capital round led by SEMCAP Health. The behavioral health integration software provider has now raised about $57 million to date, Adam Pardes, co-founder and COO, said in an interview.
Founded in 2016, NeuroFlow’s goal is to integrate behavioral health into overall healthcare, according to Pardes. By accomplishing this, he said the startup’s technology has significant potential to “improve patient lives, reduce burden on providers and reduce unnecessary costs to the healthcare system.”
The company’s platform allows providers to give patients behavioral health assessments that can detect a wide range of conditions, including anxiety and depression. The platform engages with patients by giving them personalized self care activities and allowing them to log daily insights like sleep patterns and mood scores. This enables the platform to measure patients’ progress and update their risk levels.
The platform also gives providers AI-powered clinical decision support tools to determine the best care plan for each patient.
“It’s unique because then we have that feedback loop,” Pardes said. “We are not just an app, but rather a system that our clients can use for specific clinical needs and use cases.”
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
NeuroFlow sells its technology mainly to health systems and payers, though the Department of Defense is also a customer. Other customers include Magellan Health, Trinity Health and Bozeman Health. The platform reaches about 15 million patients, according to Pardes.
The startup is using the funds it has raised to expand its sales, business development and client success teams, as well as increase its marketing budget. Some of the funds will also go toward product enhancements, as NeuroFlow is working on expanding its capabilities in Spanish and other languages, Pardes said.
But NeuroFlow is certainly not the only digital health startup promising to improve patients’ mental health. Its competitors include Concert Health, SilverCloud Health and Mindoula Health.
To Pardes, NeuroFlow differentiates itself with its ability to combine effective patient engagement technology with decision support tools for clinical staff.
“There’s lots of point solutions. There’s been hundreds of thousands of apps related to mental health on the App Store, but they typically don’t connect to anyone on the care team side,” he said. “And then there’s different types of clinical decision support programs or services, but those typically don’t have a patient engagement or user engagement side, so what we do with that combination is pretty unique.”
Photo: Nuthawut Somsuk, Getty Images
