In this Hot Take, Sr Analyst Alex Lennox-Miller discusses recent investments in new behavioral health technologies. We’ve seen a lot of movement in virtual care overall in the past 12-18 months, and one of the most exciting things about this trend how many investments have been in such a historically overlooked area of healthcare need.
In addition, the recent merger of Centene and Magellan Health establishes an opportunity for a broad virtual care behavioral health network. On the heels of that announcement, we now have Cigna’s EverNorth acquiring MDLive. By adding MDLive, they’re creating another integrated telehealth, behavioral health and chronic care platform to compete with the Teladoc / Livongos of the world.
Transcript (mostly generated by an AI transcription tool- please excuse typos)
Alex Lennox Miller: [00:00:00] Hi, welcome back to the Chilmark Research Channel. My name is Alex Lennox Miller. I’m a senior analyst here at Chilmark Research. And today I’m going to be talking to you about investments in behavioral health technology.
[00:00:30] We’ve seen a lot of movement in investments in virtual care technology over the past 12 to 14 months. One of the most exciting things about this to me is that a lot of those investments have been in behavioral health technology. The merger of Centene and Magellan Health create a broad virtual care behavioral health network. Very exciting. And now we’ve seen Cigna and Ever North by MDLive. Ever North has had their own behavioral health solution. As in mind, by adding MDLive, they’re creating another integrated telehealth, behavioral health and chronic care platform to compete with the Teladoc live on those of the world.
[00:01:20] These kind of investments are essential. Behavioral health is going to be the third wave that we see of the covid pandemic. Aside from the virus, the impacts of Lockdown’s school closures unemployment are having significant, demonstrated able and devastating effects on mental health, behavioral health and well-being. People need to be able to access these solutions, and investments like these are helping to bring solutions to more people across the country. Now, what we need is to go beyond tele-psychiatry into broader solutions that offer engagement, interactive activities, education, and really help to bring behavioral health, technology and behavioral health care to the vast number of Americans who desperately need it. One of the most interesting things that I’ve seen recently has been an explosion of interest in home interactive robotic pets, specifically targeting the geriatric population. If you want to see the cutest thing that you have seen all day, look up a tool called Paro. This is a smart, geriatric, targeted home health robot shape and designed to imitate a baby seal.
[00:02:51] The amount of research backing up the good effects of Paro and other robots is really substantial now. And in patients with loneliness, dementia and other really significant health concerns, these robots are making a huge difference. They’re adorable. They’re also really clinically valuable. I encourage you to look these up, learn more about them and just enjoy the fact that they’re cute.
[00:03:22] Thank you for watching.
[00:03:24] If you enjoyed this, please like the video and if you have any interest in these topics or getting in touch, leave a comment and we’ll make sure to get back to you.
0 Comments