HealthRhythms, a digital mental health startup that seeks to become the behavioral health intelligence layer across all of healthcare, today announced a partnership with UCHealth to scale the benefits of its groundbreaking artificial intelligence (AI) -based digital platform to millions of patients. UCHealth is a Colorado-based health care system that serves 2.3 million patients.
The HealthRhythms' app uses smartphone sensors like an accelerometer to passively measure behavior relevant to mental health, and leverages AI to assess an individual's mental health status. It then uses that information to deliver personalized, timely interventions to improve mental health — sent directly to the patient's smartphone. This helps solve the universal problems of patient monitoring and early detection, enabling providers to effectively triage and treat patients across the risk continuum.
"Partnering with UCHealth is a significant milestone in our commitment to transforming mental health care. HealthRhythms is the only company fully addressing this problem through valid measurement, high fidelity prediction and a highly personalized digital intervention platform that can be scaled to hundreds of millions of patients."
HealthRhythms' CEO Paul Gilbert
"The current health landscape is characterized by poor access to timely, high-quality mental health care. HealthRhythms' groundbreaking predictive analytics are unique and steeped in rigorous research," said Neill Epperson, MD, chair of the University of Colorado Department of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. "Widespread utilization of HealthRhythms' technology will transform how we care for patients with mental health concerns."
"Patients with complex medical conditions like heart disease commonly also have complex mental health challenges. It is impossible to appropriately treat these patients without addressing all of the issues contributing to their health," said Dr. Richard Zane, chief innovation officer at UCHealth and chair of emergency medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. "The real breakthrough with HealthRhythms is that it allows all types of providers across all specialties to integrate behavioral health into their care without needing to be mental health experts."
"Our vision is to have HealthRhythms on the phone of every patient who consents to it across the entire UCHealth system," said Kimberly A. Muller, executive director of CU Innovations, a strategic healthcare fund affiliated with the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. "We recognize that mental health is, in fact, health. Addressing mental health is essential to everything we are looking to do for care integration. We believe HealthRhythms' data and insights will change the face of care."
UCHealth, a nationally-recognized academic health system with 12 hospitals and hundreds of clinic locations is focused on improving access to behavioral health care throughout Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska. By diagnosing behavioral health concerns at earlier stages, and by providing timely intervention, HealthRhythms improves all patients' lives, especially those with serious chronic diseases.
HealthRhythms also announced the close of a highly oversubscribed $11 million seed round led by GSR Ventures and investor Brook Byers, founding member of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. "This investor syndicate of 44 health tech leaders is one of the most accomplished, networked, and powerful I've ever seen," said Byers. "Securing this broad support behind HealthRhythms' world-class team for an important behavioral health mission is an awesome force multiplier."
Dr. Sunny Kumar, a partner at GSR, will join the HealthRhythms Board of Directors. "Over the years, GSR has met with several hundred mental health companies, but HealthRhythms is one of the very few in which we have invested," said Dr. Kumar. "HealthRhythms is different because it addresses the core challenge in mental health care: improving both access and quality - the Holy Grail dimensions of mental healthcare - while enabling providers to deploy resources across a much broader population. The improvement in depression management that the company has demonstrated is a game changer, unmatched by virtually any available digital therapeutic that I'm aware of. The company's groundbreaking approach is rooted in a deep understanding of mental health and how to design digital experiences that are personally meaningful and easily woven into daily life."
The HealthRhythms platform leverages over 40 years of laboratory and clinical research by HealthRhythms' co-founders who are regarded as pioneers and field leaders in the understanding of the causes and treatment of mental disorders.
About HealthRhythms
HealthRhythms is on a mission to become the behavioral health intelligence layer across all of healthcare and pharma. By capturing critical behavioral information — from social engagement to sleep/wake regulation to physical activity patterns — HealthRhythms provides a continuous, objective picture of individuals' behavioral health in their everyday environment, along with clinically-actionable insights about those behaviors. Pioneered by a team of successful startup founders and internationally-recognized leaders in tech, business, and medicine, HealthRhythms will redefine how mental health is understood and managed.
About UCHealth
UCHealth is an innovative, nonprofit health system that delivers the highest quality medical care with an excellent patient experience. UCHealth includes 26,000 employees, 12 acute-care full-service hospitals and thousands of physicians across Colorado, southern Wyoming and western Nebraska. With University of Colorado Hospital on the CU Ansxhutz Medical Campus as its academic anchor and the only adult academic medical center in the region, UCHealth is dedicated to providing unmatched patient care in the Rocky Mountain West. Offering more than 150 clinic locations, UCHealth pushes the boundaries of medicine, providing advanced treatments and clinical trials and improving health through innovation.
About GSR Ventures
GSR Ventures is an early-stage investor in technology companies developing AI-enabled healthcare technology, enterprise software, and consumer platforms. The Palo-Alto based GSR team includes founders, physicians and enterprise executives with unmatched industry expertise. Founded in 2004, the firm has more than $3 billion under management. In addition to HealthRhythms, the U.S. portfolio includes Medable, Deep6 AI, Kinsa and AppliedVR.