Digital mental health start-up Koa Health raises €30M to accelerate growth in Europe and the US

Men­tal health­care start­up Koa Health clos­es €30M Series A fund­ing to expand its inter­na­tion­al foot­print (Sil­i­con Canals):

In a recent devel­op­ment, Barcelona-based dig­i­tal men­tal health­care provider, Koa Health, has announced it closed an over­sub­scribed €30M Series A fund­ing round … The com­pa­ny had raised the funds back in Octo­ber 2020 and had also announced its spin-out from Alpha, Telefónica’s start­up factory.

The raised cap­i­tal will be used to boost Koa Health’s growth and expand its inter­na­tion­al foot­print includ­ing the US.

Oliv­er Har­ri­son, CEO of Koa Health says, “We know that there has been a greater demand for men­tal health­care on both sides of the Atlantic as the stig­ma around men­tal health con­tin­ues to decline. How­ev­er, we still have a long way to go. At Koa Health, our mis­sion is to deliv­er men­tal well­be­ing for all. Access to men­tal health­care is a human right that shouldn’t be buried by stig­ma, lack of access, or afford­abil­i­ty. With this round of fund­ing, we’ll be able to scale our dig­i­tal men­tal health solu­tions and offer a per­son­alised, more afford­able, and effec­tive solu­tion for peo­ple to man­age their men­tal health.”

The funds will enable the com­pa­ny to accel­er­ate its prod­uct devel­op­ment, includ­ing expand­ing con­tent for its dig­i­tal men­tal well­ness solu­tions, mak­ing pro­grams avail­able in addi­tion­al lan­guages, and expand­ing the diag­noses that Koa’s solu­tions can support.

News in Context:

Address­ing the men­tal health cri­sis (Phar­ma Field):

Each day we find out more about the men­tal health effects of the pan­dem­ic. Ear­ly on, the Office for Nation­al Sta­tis­tics found that one in five Britons report­ed symp­toms of depres­sion, com­pared with one in 10 before. And, accord­ing to a recent study led by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham and King’s Col­lege Lon­don, stress, anx­i­ety and depres­sion were all sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er in par­tic­i­pants com­pared with ‘pop­u­la­tion norms’, with 64% of the par­tic­i­pants report­ing symp­toms of depres­sion and 57% report­ing symp­toms of anx­i­ety… Through sim­ple force of neces­si­ty, COVID-19 has prompt­ed many peo­ple to explore the ben­e­fits of tele­health and dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics, from the com­fort of their home. In fact, it’s esti­mat­ed that the num­ber of peo­ple using dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics and well­ness apps will grow from 627 mil­lion in 2020 to more than 1.4 bil­lion in 2025. I believe that clin­i­cians and the pub­lic have realised that dig­i­tal solu­tions can deliv­er high-qual­i­ty health­care, with low­er bar­ri­ers to access, and sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits in cost and time effectiveness.

But there is progress to be made. Dig­i­tal men­tal health solu­tions, and the com­pa­nies that pro­vide them, must over­come some impor­tant hur­dles to ensure bet­ter user expe­ri­ence. At present, very few men­tal health apps have study data. It’s crit­i­cal that these are ground­ed in sci­ence, with activ­i­ties being evi­dence-based. For exam­ple, we use the prin­ci­ples of cog­ni­tive behav­iour­al ther­a­py (CBT), mind­ful­ness and pos­i­tive psy­chol­o­gy – all based on in-depth research. In addi­tion, eth­i­cal prac­tices must be rig­or­ous, with more being done to ensure com­pa­nies store and utilise data eth­i­cal­ly and respon­si­bly. This needs to go beyond sim­ply com­ply­ing with GDPR; dig­i­tal men­tal health com­pa­nies need to devel­op and imple­ment their own eth­i­cal frame­works and ide­al­ly have them exter­nal­ly audited.

»> Ethics audit of Koa Health’s REM!X app HERE (opens PDF)