Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled chatbot Wysa raises $5.5M to broaden access to mental health support

By SharpBrains | May 24, 2021

Wysa’s AI-Guid­ed Men­tal Health Plat­form Clos­es $5.5M Series A to Bridge the Gap in Employ­ee Men­tal Health (press release): “Wysa, the lead­ing glob­al AI-pow­ered men­tal health plat­form, today, dur­ing Men­tal Health Aware­ness Month, announced a $5.5M Series A financ­ing round led by W Health Ven­tures, a Boston-based dig­i­tal health investor. Oth­ers par­tic­i­pat­ing in the round…

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Teladoc Health, having acquired Livongo and myStrength, launches integrated mental health service for the workplace

By SharpBrains | May 19, 2021

Teladoc builds out men­tal health­care ser­vices with myS­trength Com­plete (Mobi­Health­News): Vir­tu­al care giant Teladoc is build­ing out its behav­ioral health ser­vices through its lat­est pro­gram, myS­trength Com­plete. The new offer­ing is designed to give users a sin­gle inte­grat­ed men­tal health­care expe­ri­ence. It com­bines the app-based mod­els of care from myS­trength with Teladoc’s on-demand ther­a­pists and…

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Ohio joins Indiana and Kentucky in funding Pear Therapeutics’ digital addiction treatments

By SharpBrains | April 26, 2021

Ohio is third state to fund Pear’s dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics to tack­le addic­tion (phar­mafo­rum): The com­pa­ny has been push­ing for more reim­burse­ment of its three mar­ket­ed DTx prod­ucts in the US fol­low­ing a first FDA approval in 2017. Pear said that the Ohio Depart­ment of Men­tal Health and Addic­tion Ser­vices (OhioMHAS) and Recov­ery­Ohio are pro­vid­ing access to…

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Debate: How and when will the telemedicine surge reach mental healthcare?

By Alvaro Fernandez | August 25, 2020

Covid-19 Pan­dem­ic Dri­ves Patients—and Deal Makers—to Telemed­i­cine (The Wall Street Jour­nal): The coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic has put the once-niche cat­e­go­ry of telemed­i­cine in the spot­light and is now dri­ving a flur­ry of deal activ­i­ty involv­ing vir­tu­al health-care providers … Patients have embraced vir­tu­al care as a way to stay in touch with doc­tors for urgent care or…

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Startup Big Health raises $39M to universalize access to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for anxiety and poor sleep

By SharpBrains | June 29, 2020

Big Health Hones Dig­i­tal Men­tal Health Ther­a­py With $39M Series B (Crunch­base): “Start­up Big Health believes indi­vid­u­als can improve their men­tal health through its tech­nol­o­gy that focus­es on cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py ver­sus med­ica­tion or the help of human ther­a­pists. On Thurs­day it raised $39 mil­lion in a Series B financ­ing to advance that objective.

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Four immediate priorities to flatten the mental distress curve

By The Conversation | June 22, 2020

The men­tal health cri­sis trig­gered by COVID-19 is esca­lat­ing rapid­ly. One exam­ple: When com­pared to a 2018 sur­vey, U.S. adults are now eight times more like­ly to meet the cri­te­ria for seri­ous men­tal dis­tress. One-third of Amer­i­cans report clin­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant symp­toms of anx­i­ety or clin­i­cal depres­sion, accord­ing to a late May 2020 release of Census…

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