From Hype to Hope in Behavioral Health: Moving the Needle on Outcomes at Scale

The healthcare industry has finally come to understand that behavioral health matters, that it drives significant medical spend and poorer clinical outcomes, and that we need to fully integrate behavioral health into any solution that aims to improve total cost of care. Just last week, Fortune’s Brainstorm Health conference featured an entire session titled ‘Mental Health: The Missing Link on the Health Care Continuum’ moderated by Arianna Huffington and featuring Kaiser CEO, Bernard Tyson, who has time and again been a vocal advocate for the need to re-integrate physical and mental health.

But in behavioral health, we still suffer from a ‘what next?’ problem. Powerful analytics and digital tools have made it easier to identify the right people at the right time and engage individuals at risk for behavioral health conditions. Despite this, what solutions are we offering patients when we get in front of them? How are we adapting and growing to meet the unique needs of the millions of individuals struggling with physical and mental health issues?

No small number of apps and digital point solutions have cropped up hoping to be the panacea. There is no scarcity of talk across the healthcare system about innovation and technology in service of improving patient engagement and experience. Indeed, technology has enabled us to extend care virtually to break down obstacles around stigma and access to care.

But while technology has the capacity to connect, we have to ensure the care delivered is of high quality, proven, and with demonstrated outcomes. That’s the real promise of technology. And I see the profound positive impact of technology-enabled delivery of behavioral health care in my work at AbleTo every day. While much behavioral health care may feel like shades of gray, there are actually many decades of quality evidence behind many behavioral therapies. And at AbleTo, we’ve long looked beyond technology for sake of solving the access issue alone, and instead employed technology to ensure the delivery of high quality behavioral health care, consistently delivered with high fidelity to the published evidence. Technology also allows us to customize treatment to meet individual patient needs and support holistic care integrating physical and mental health.

I am extremely proud that our evidence-based and outcomes-driven approach is highlighted in a recent edition of Psychiatric Services, a journal of the American Psychiatric Association, in a section of the journal titled ‘Promoting High Value Mental Healthcare.’ Using one of the largest databases of treatment data collected using the same evidence-based protocols, AbleTo found that 64% of our patients experienced at least a 50% reduction in depression. You can read the full paper online here to learn more about AbleTo’s ability to identify, engage, and deliver high quality treatment via our platform and providers to meaningfully improve clinical outcomes. The billions of data points captured over 6 years of treating real patients allow us to deepen our understanding, optimize engagement, and create personalized treatment experiences for our patients.

I’m always inspired by the constant evolution happening in health care to make things work better for patients and lower costs for the healthcare system. The accelerated pace of innovation can feel relentless, but we are making progress. I’m proud to be a part of the process and hope that sharing some of the insights and success we see in our work will inspire others as we move from just hype to real hope to tackle behavioral health together.