Technology Is Helping to Solve Health Care Barriers

OVERVIEW

During the pandemic, nearly 40% of employers enhanced their mental health or well-being benefits. While payers and providers worked on adding more mental health professionals to their staff, the health tech world saw an opportunity to scale mental health support via technology and fill the gap between supply and demand. The mental health apps market increased by 54.6% in a span of just two years from 2019 to 2021, and it is estimated to continue double-digit growth until 2030. Many mental health tech companies focused on solutions for stress, anxiety, and depression. Others found niche markets such as teenagers or athletes. Services provided by these apps range from online therapist sessions to on-demand meditations and much more. 

1. SINGER-SONGWRITER, JEWEL, WANTS VIRTUAL HEALING 

Jewel is taking her mission to scale mental health support to the metaverse. For decades, Jewel Kilcher, has been championing mental and emotional wellbeing through various avenues including her Inspiring Children Foundation. The musician is the co-founder of Innerworld, a new platform that lets anyone create an avatar and enter a world where they can find immediate support for managing depression, loss, anxiety, and ADHD, as well as chronic illness and addiction recovery. Innerworld is monitored 24/7 by live guides and bolstered AI who welcome users and ensure they follow Innerworld’s rules, which include no conversations about politics or religion, no bullying, no trolling, and no negativity. While Innerworld wasn’t designed to be therapy or crisis intervention, it’s a peer-based model that can complement regular therapy.

2. MONITORING BLOOD GLUCOSE WITHOUT A PRICK

Apple has a moonshot-style project underway that dates back to the Steve Jobs era: noninvasive and continuous blood glucose monitoring. The goal of this secret endeavor — dubbed E5 — is to measure how much glucose is in someone’s body without needing to prick the skin for blood. Apple's device would use light to measure glucose levels in interstitial fluid, just below the skin. Engineers are developing a prototype device that is about the size of an iPhone and can be strapped to the bicep, but it would ultimately need to be shrunk down, with the goal of incorporating it into the Apple Watch. Apple envisions the technology being used to warn people if they’re prediabetic to help them avoid developing Type 2 diabetes. After hitting major milestones recently, the company now believes it could eventually bring this glucose technology to the market. 

3. TAKE A SELFIE, KNOW YOU’RE HEALTHIE   

For all the convenience of telehealth visits, your doctor can't take your vital signs. That's a gap NuraLogix, a health tech company, wants to fix with its face-scanning app for smartphones. Anura’s intended use is to increase people’s awareness of their general wellness. The diagnostic selfie app uses AI to measure your blood pressure, heart rate and even your risk of diabetes. The company claims its Anura technology can even help prevent and manage chronic illnesses. The company's website indicates that the AI can assess potential psychological issues. The tech also works in concert with healthcare professionals—when patients attend virtual appointments, doctors can get a live reading of their vitals. Anura has the capability to assess protein and hormone levels with a single finger prick. This particular piece of the tech has not yet been cleared by the FDA but results are typically read within five minutes.

4. CHATGPT > WEBMD

The machine of the moment just passed all three parts of the US Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE). For context, second-year medical students spend hundreds of hours preparing for Part 1, while only medical school graduates take Part 3. Since ChatGPT is still a nascent technology, maybe one day it will actually assist doctors rather than replace them altogether. Can a computer outperform a general practitioner, according to experts, no. The downside to AI models like ChatGPT is sometimes they make confident statements that turn out to be false, which could be deadly in a doctor’s office. However, a research experiment led by Silicon Valley startup Ansible Health found that ChatGPT can still perform relatively well without being trained on a medical dataset. As ChatGPT seems to be programmed against giving medical advice, the researchers excluded a set of “indeterminate answers so general that it was hard to say if they were right or wrong.” Ansible was impressed enough with the results to start using ChatGPT to help explain concepts to patients after training from a physician. The most likely application might be incorporating a patient's medical records, which a doctor only has a few moments to digest in the room. Over time, ChatGPT could conduct wellness checks, and once it moves beyond text, it could adopt voices, body language, and facial expressions. 

5. STRESS-BUSTING CABINS

Developed to combat the global stress pandemic, the highly effective, scientifically-validated AYAVAYA cabin utilizes four automated, non-invasive treatments to eliminate stress within 20 minutes and bring the user into a meditative state. Treatments include Shirodhara, a 5,000 year old Ayurvedic procedure in which warm water is projected onto the forehead with a specific pressure, flow, temperature and rhythm to induce a relaxed state of awareness that results in a dynamic psychosomatic balance. Sound therapy and 8D surround sound technology with Solfeggio binaural beats soundtracks cause a rapid recalibration of the brain to restore mental balance. Lastly, aromatherapy and colored Light therapy that reinforces the meditation-inducing effects of the Shirodhara treatment. Developed for use by people at offices, hotels, airports and airport lounges, hospitals, health spas, gyms, and therapist offices, while also making it affordable for these types of establishments to offer treatments at a low price, with low power and water consumption.

6. EARBLES FRENZ TRACKS BRAIN ACTIVITY 

FRENZ Brainband is the world's first consumer wearable that unlocks human potential by tracking and stimulating brain activities to improve sleep quality, focus, and relaxation. FRENZ is the only consumer device that captures brain signals (EEG), multiple bio-vitals (EKG, spO2, head motion, breathing rhythm), facial-micromovements (EMG), and eye motions (EOG) in real-time with unrivaled precision. By analyzing these signals, FRENZ activates clinically-proven personalized cognitive behavioral therapies via bone-conduction speakers to induce faster sleep onset, deeper sleep, quicker returns to sleep, and refreshing mornings. FRENZ also stands out thanks to its style and comfort. The material’s comfort and durability enable all-day and all-night use.

TAKEAWAY

The advancement of technology-based tools has helped increase access to mental health care and the use of digital technology for mental health care increased by over 30% in recent years. This has paved the way for more effective treatments while allowing individuals to receive their care from the comfort of their own homes. Behavioral health will continue to take center stage in 2023. It will be critical that industry stakeholders collaborate to identify critical mental health needs and leverage available technology to produce meaningful change.

Visual Design by Jonné Pratt, Research and Write Up by Catherine Marsh.

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