Headspace Health acquires AI-driven digital mental health start-up Sayana

JPM 2022: Head­space Health grabs start­up Sayana to build out AI-based men­tal health tools (Fierce Healthcare):

Six months after the $3 bil­lion merg­er with Gin­ger, Head­space Health acquired Sayana, an AI-dri­ven men­tal health and well­ness company.

Sayana will expand Head­space Health’s abil­i­ty to pro­vide per­son­al­ized self-care con­tent to its 100 mil­lion users, exec­u­tives said … Head­space lever­ages AI to pow­er a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of the care the com­pa­ny deliv­ers, [Rus­sell Glass, CEO, Head­space Health] said dur­ing the JPM con­fer­ence, includ­ing using nat­ur­al lan­guage pro­cess­ing to extract infor­ma­tion from the chats, to sum­ma­rize coach notes and care infor­ma­tion and to mon­i­tor for suicidality …

“We’ve got­ten to the point now where con­tent rec­om­men­da­tions via AI are high­er qual­i­ty by engage­ment rate than rec­om­men­da­tions from providers them­selves. The AI rec­om­men­da­tions for con­tent are used more fre­quent­ly,” Glass said … Head­space also is focused on work­ing with more employ­ers through its enter­prise brands, Head­space for Work and Gin­ger. The com­pa­ny cur­rent­ly part­ners with 3,500 enter­pris­es through health plans such as Cigna.

“We’re see­ing hyper­growth in that side of the busi­ness,” he said dur­ing JPM. The com­pa­ny reports 59% year-over-year growth in employ­er bookings.

The Annoucement:

Head­space Health Announces Acqui­si­tion of AI-Dri­ven Men­tal Health and Well­ness Com­pa­ny, Sayana (press release):

Head­space Health, the provider of the world’s most acces­si­ble, com­pre­hen­sive dig­i­tal men­tal health plat­form, today announced the acqui­si­tion of Sayana, an AI-dri­ven men­tal health and well­ness com­pa­ny. Sayana will expand Head­space Health’s abil­i­ty to pro­vide per­son­al­ized self-care con­tent to its grow­ing glob­al mem­ber base.

Found­ed in 2018 and backed by Y Com­bi­na­tor in 2020, Sayana has sup­port­ed users around the world to improve their men­tal well­ness by help­ing its mem­bers become more mind­ful of the con­nec­tions between their feel­ings and events … Sayana per­son­al­izes users’ expe­ri­ences based on their check-ins and mood trends, sur­fac­ing high-qual­i­ty con­tent and self-care exer­cis­es root­ed in cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py (CBT), accep­tance com­mit­ment ther­a­py (ACT) and dialec­ti­cal behav­ioral ther­a­py (DBT), as well as breath­ing exercises…

With the addi­tion of Sayana, Head­space Health will advance its capa­bil­i­ty to per­son­al­ize mem­ber expe­ri­ences — to bet­ter under­stand, sup­port and improve their feel­ings and mood … The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

News in Context:

• Head­space and Gin­ger merge to expand and scale up dig­i­tal men­tal health
• The land­scape of dig­i­tal men­tal health apps: huge unmet needs, qual­i­ty con­cerns, app stores asked to ensure transparency
• The Nation­al Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine (NAM) shares dis­cus­sion paper to help empow­er 8 bil­lion minds via the eth­i­cal adop­tion of dig­i­tal men­tal health and neurotech