Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind

Startups

Osmind Raises $40M for Breakthrough Mental Health Therapies

Severe mental health disorders are complicated problems to solve, and the legacy documentation systems used by most psychiatrists don’t do much to help the rate of progress. Electronic health record startup Osmind raised $40M in Series B funding to equip psychiatrists with tools to better manage complex patients, while also starting to fill the data gap in research for breakthrough therapies.

On the surface, Osmind offers an EHR tailored to clinicians serving patients with treatment-resistant mental health conditions like severe depression and PTSD.

• The Osmind EHR supports clinical and administrative functions with features that streamline charting workflows, automate outcome tracking, and drive engagement.

• An integrated mobile app enables patients to record their thoughts and feelings in between visits, giving providers a clearer view of their patients’ overall well-being. 

The back end of Osmind’s platform is equally as important as the EHR. A real-world evidence engine takes the granular data from the EHR and makes it available to researchers studying breakthrough mental health treatments such as ketamine and psychedelics.

• While other companies like Flatiron Health and Verily also leverage anonymized patient data to influence therapy design, Osmind has quickly compiled a leading dataset to help translate this strategy to the mental health arena.

• Earlier this year, Osmind partnered with Stanford University School of Medicine to publish the largest-ever real-world data study on ketamine infusion therapy as a treatment for depression.

The fresh funding will be used to expand Osmind’s team as well as the types of data its software can capture to advance a wider range of clinical trials and therapies.

The Takeaway

Mental health startups have proliferated over the past few years, but few have focused on breakthrough treatments for the millions of patients who have tried and failed multiple other options. Osmind’s new funding will allow it to better help these patients, not with direct clinical care, but by supporting the providers and researchers already serving them.

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The Wire

• Cerebral Investigation: Telehealth startup Cerebral received a subpoena from federal prosecutors for possible violations of the Controlled Substances Act following weeks of increasing scrutiny over its prescribing practices. The investigation arrives shortly after a former Cerebral executive alleged the company pressured its clinicians to prescribe stimulants without careful diagnoses, and failed to investigate duplicate shipping addresses in its database that were tied to patients suspected of making multiple accounts to access more medication.

• Declining Experience Scores: The Leapfrog Group’s Adult Inpatient Care Report recently quantified the decline in hospital patient experience and safety scores seen throughout the pandemic. Only 63% of patients reported favorable ratings of the responsiveness of hospital staff in 2021 (vs. 67% in 2019), with staff communication about medicine scores also falling from 64% to 61% over the same time period. Scores were less favorable across all but one domain examined by HCAHPS, with the lone improvement coming from “quietness of the hospital.”

• Amwell Earnings: Amwell’s first quarter earnings report showed a steady increase in its number of patients and providers as it invests heavily in new service launches. The telehealth company had 102k active providers at the end of Q1 (up from 91k in Q1 2021), and finished the quarter with 1.8M total visits (up 20% from the previous quarter). Although expenses outpaced revenue growth during the quarter, CEO Ido Schoenberg said the narrative would flip in the second half of the year as Amwell begins to recognize revenue from large launches like its Converge virtual care platform.

• Interoperability Challenges: An OIG audit of the efforts by the Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs to make their Cerner systems interoperable found large gaps in its data exchange capabilities and an overall failure to consistently migrate old patient data into the new system. The audit also uncovered a lack of interfaces to automatically upload medical device data and poor controls over patient data access, which raises HIPAA concerns and makes it seem like we’re still a long way away from a seamless EHR for the federal government.

• Small Practice Struggles: The federal government is far from the only institution facing interoperability challenges, with a recent analysis of 2019 National Electronic Health Record Survey data revealing that only 44% of solo practitioners were able to send and receive data from outside sources (compared to 76% of those in practices with over 50 physicians), while just 17% of solo practitioners were able to incorporate that data into their EHR (vs. 51% in large practices). The researchers state that these discrepancies lead to unequal benefits from information exchange, and that small practices require more incentives to encourage the use of interoperable EHRs.

• Intermountain + General Catalyst: Intermountain Healthcare is entering a strategic partnership with venture capital firm General Catalyst to explore areas where GC portfolio companies can help drive innovation and accelerate the shift to value-based care. These companies include Transcarent, Olive, Aidoc, Sprinter Health, Commure, and Cadence, with broad expertise ranging from employer benefits to population health. GC has a stated vision to reduce the gross domestic product of healthcare by 20% by 2030, a goal well aligned for a collaboration with the not-for-profit health system.

• Algorithms & Primary Care: The Harvard Business Review published an interesting article exploring how automation will become a “critical component” or primary care, as long as it’s developed responsibly. At the core of automated primary care systems are algorithms that guide the process of care to ensure clinical quality and operational efficiency. The authors argue that these algorithms should never be viewed as set in stone, and will require continuous oversight to assess their impact on patient safety, satisfaction, and outcomes.

• ACP Effectiveness: Aledade recently published a study demonstrating the cost effectiveness of advanced care planning at the end of life. Researchers identified 335 patients across 45 practices at the highest risk of mortality, then divided the patients into a care-as-usual group and a treatment group that received comprehensive ACP from Iris Healthcare. Patients in the treatment group saw an average of $13,916 in reduced costs over the four year study, results that impressed Aledade so much that it acquired Iris Healthcare following the study.

• Heard Series A: Behavioral health infrastructure startup Heard raised a $10M Series A round to develop its platform that helps therapists manage back office functions like accounting and taxes. Heard’s subscription model allows therapists to “spend less time accounting and more time listening” by offloading their administrative tasks, with most of the company’s current clients consisting of early-career providers looking to set up private practices.

• Physician Mistreatment: A survey of 1,505 Stanford physicians conducted between September and October 2020 found that 23% had experienced mistreatment in the last year, with women more than twice as likely to experience mistreatment than men (31% vs 15%). Although those percentages alone are enough to highlight the severity of the issue, the study also found that mistreatment was associated with a 1.13 point increase in burnout (10 point scale), a 0.99 point decrease in professional fulfillment, and 129% higher odds of intent to leave.