Mental Health Tech goes viral

How can technology help?

So how can tech solutions help? We first need to look at some recent history; for a myriad of reasons, mental health has typically been slow to embrace technology compared to other areas of medicine where science and tech combine to help medical professionals diagnose and treat patients.

Although demand outstrips supply, addressing matters of the mind is complex. It is often carried out on a one-to-one basis, relying on the individual expertise, differing techniques and personal interpretations of therapists, alongside primarily self-reporting by the patient, which in itself is often cognitively biased and misrepresented, especially in cases of trauma.

Aside from digital note taking, historically there has been little opportunity for technology to intervene in this direct information exchange, even less to be able to collect and analyse data. Even the arrival of the GPS tracking and sensor recording smartphone posed limitations - use is sporadic, certain demographics are excluded and data sharing is a legal quagmire.

Efforts by the Tech Industry

With rocketing mental health needs and increased reliance on tech solutions to provide some form of normality during the crisis, in early March Techforce-19 was born, an effort by a range of organisations, managed by PUBLIC presenting a challenge to the tech industry to support the elderly, vulnerable and self-isolating in the community. Funds were made available to 18 winning companies to support the trial and deployment of their solutions, with a view to taking them nationwide.

“We received 1,643 applications from diverse founders which shows the immense interest in this subject,” Mark Lazar, Head of Platform at PUBLIC told us. “From smart note taking to the use of Virtual Reality for serious trauma rehabilitation, we learned that there is a lot of different tech out there and that is hugely exciting”.

One of the winning startups, Peppy, provides new parents with remote access to trusted advice from perinatal and mental health experts, a solution that is most often used by companies to help parents back to work.

“Peppy helps individuals and families from going down this cascade of deteriorating mental health”, explains Co-Founder, Mridula Pore. “You are not clinically ill, but if your mental health is impacted, then so is your work.”
Mridula and her team noted that anxiety was increasing exponentially during isolation. Postnatal help had fallen off a cliff and midwife visits were no more. Being able to take their solution to a wider audience illustrated the severity of the problem; over 10,000 applications were received, weighted towards BAME participants and those on Universal Credit. Peppy’s technology had uncovered more than a mental health problem.

''One of the defining characteristics of UK tech entrepreneurs has always been their agility and strengths in finding opportunities in tough times'' says Russ. “Lest we forget the UK tech sector grew from the ashes of the global financial crisis. Covid-19 has not been an exception, and across multiple verticals from fintech and healthtech to edtech and retailtech, we have seen exceptional innovation and creativity to pivot in the face of unparalleled economic disruption”.