R&D for mental health credentials

[IMPACT]

Background and Context

91M US adults with a behavioral health disorder in 2019 (NAMI) and 45% (41M) of whom are receiving treatment. A typical mental healthcare patient will have more than one provider – a psychiatrist, psychologist, primary care physician etc – but coordinating between those providers usually falls to the patient and can be time-consuming and error-prone. Our team accepts the opinion of 600+ peer-reviewed articles that better care coordination results in better mental health care. Our goal over the last several months has been to learn where in the broad spectrum of mental health care the need for care coordination is most acute. This acute area of need will be our starting point for developing a product which solves a known problem for a narrowly defined customer that is representative of a large market opportunity.

Our team has already done 100+ customer discovery interviews with patients, care providers, thought leaders, think tanks, NGOs and investors. We have discovered two acute areas of need where we believe we could enter the market:

• Psychedelics-assisted therapy
• University mental health

This proposal focuses on the latter, university mental health, as we have an opportunity to collaborate with the student wellness team at a major US university with more than 30k students. We also learned through our interviews that parents are a highly motivated stakeholder in the dynamic of student mental health care coordination, and so possibly the payer in our business model. The opportunity is to run a focus group with a group of 100+ parents and students for whom, off the back of the focus group, we would be able to pilot a solution.

Simultaneously, we would engage with several care providers to understand what might be their specific needs as it relates to receiving and/or sharing health information with parents/students and other care providers for care coordination purposes. In particular, we would need to understand how a new product would need to fit in with their existing ways of working in order to be adopted.

This opportunity represents the fruit of over a year of research conversations, networking and building relationships among university mental healthcare professionals. There is a limited window as our university partner intends to run a program for parents of university students with mental health diagnoses and we have been invited to run our workshop during the program. In our experience opportunities like this to study the challenge of coordinating mental healthcare with input from students, parents and the university at one table are incredibly rare and we would like to ensure we can participate.

Our objective is to:

1. Gain a deeper understanding of the problems parents and students face through a focus group and survey exercise
2. Run through a design process in order to develop and improve a solution prototype
3. Learn about the needs of care providers as it relates to the coordination of care for students, with parents as a key stakeholder

Our audience is:

1. Students with an existing or new mental health diagnosis, especially those attending a university which is far from home
2. University care providers or care providers in the community
3. Parents of the students described above in #1
4. To a lesser degree, university mental health leadership

The outputs will be:

1. A summary of the research findings
2. A validated solution prototype

The impact will be:

1. Conclusion of a robust minimum viable product design process that results in a qualified set of requirements and prototypes
2. A clear plan for developing the required solution and implementing a pilot
3. A pathway to Atala PRISM credentials being used in a production use case in the US healthcare system

The proposal brings adoption of Atala PRISM credentials on Cardano to a major potential use case (market value >$1.5bn) with deliverables the achieve the following two criteria:

1. A Feasibility Study / Proof of Concept / Minimum Viable Product that could be built on Cardano
2. A prototype or demo in operational environment

The proposal will align with the success goals of the challenge:

1. Innovative products and services - use of Atala PRISM credentials in a deeply specialised and thoroughly researched problem setting.
2. that increase efficiency, transparency, and stakeholder engagement - the purpose of the solution is to improve care coordination by better engaging key stakeholders in that process.
3. as well as expand business to new areas - because of the risk aversion of US health care, and in particular mental health, there are limited use cases involving verifiable credentials in this context.

Patchy problem definition: a focus group and survey may reveal that the problem is not succinctly defined across given stakeholder group. This heterogeneity presents a marketing challenge and execution challenge. The way to mitigate is by addressing a core set of requirements as early as possible, in the ideation exercise.

Problems too great to be solved: these issues are systemic by nature so we expect the problems to be complex. Navigating the complexity to find the narrowest possible solution is at once challenging, and the main purpose of this proposal.

Care providers don’t want to use a new system: we have heard over and over that providing a new system to care providers that changes their current way of working is a huge barrier. We seek to minimise/eliminate that barrier by (a) making sure that other stakeholders do the data entry and rely on care providers for a limited / semi-automated set of functions (b) provide integration points with their existing infrastructure so that they do not have change systems.

[FEASIBILITY]

April/May

1. Run a focus group with 100+ parents, students and (separately) caregivers to gain a deeper understanding of the problems they face in care coordinatio
2. Develop a survey to be distributed through the focus group to their extended networ

June

1. Develop a set of ideas for how these problems can be solved and ideate with participant
2. Document a set of business requirements off the back of these research activitie
3. Develop a set of technical requirements based on the business requirement

July

1. Develop a prototype of the solution and test this with the participant
2. Fund 9: Develop a beta solution and pilot this with the participant

Our total budget for this propels is $19,936 and we provide an activity-based budget below. Our budget follows the following format:

Activity cost

• Sub-total: $xxx

BUDGET

4 x focus groups, each costing - $ 1,974.00

• Sub-total: $7,896

1 x prototype design - $ 2,680.00 

• Sub-total: $2,680

20 x care provider interviews, each costing - $ 368.00

• Sub-total: $7,360

4 x internal travel, each costing - $500

• Sub-total: $2,000

TOTAL = $19,936

Prof. André Fenton, PhD: NYU Professor of Neural Science, Director of the Neurobiology of Cognition Laboratory, Med Tech Entrepreneur and Public Intellectual, Advisor to US National Institute of Mental Health Leadership.

Sasha Borovik: Negotiated the first cloud deals under HIPAA and GDPR, and General Counsel for VC deals worth $500m. Microsoft Head Legal Counsel for Healthcare, Management of Akamai, Advisor to WHO.

Nick Mason: Delivered independently evaluated & ID2020 certified MedTech for CLIA labs. Decentralised ID lead (ProofSpace) & 10yrs social impact venture building in Europe and Africa.

John Gridley: Built & exited digital platforms for millions of users in regulated markets. PwC & 20 years’ in Tier 1 VC tech and medtech, clinical trials and FDA 510 (k) approval of neurological medical devices. 2021 exit to Philips as angel investor in AI health co. Currently a volunteer mentor and angel investor in femtech and social impact startups, member of new social impact angel investment group.

[AUDITABILITY]

Progression of this proposal will be recorded in the monthly Catalyst reports and an end of project report, evaluated against the project deliverables (see below).

May

• We will share the sample survey and focus group plan

June

• We will share high level business and technical requirements

July

1. We will share a prototype (screenshots or clickable)
2. We will draft a F9 proposal to implement the prototype into an MVP

Success in this proposal would look like:

1. Published anonymized findings from focus group and survey
2. Published prototype of proposed solution.
3. Validation of proposed solution and invitation to pilot.
4. In the future, development of an MVP based on the validated prototype and filing of a successful F9 proposal to develop that MVP.

No

SDG Rating

SDG Goals

• Goal 3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages 

SDG Subgoals

• 3.4 By 2030, reduce by one third premature mortality from non-communicable diseases through prevention and treatment and promote mental health and well-being