Why Have I Joined HelloBetter? Because We Make Evidence-Based and Effective Digital Mental Health Care Universally Accessible and Affordable!

After my unforgettable time at Stanford's Center for Digital Health, I was looking for a promising digital health job in Germany and I always had 3 important criteria in mind that guided my search:

1. Evidence is the currency to earn trust in healthcare! Look for a company that has research and clinical evidence in its DNA.
2. Look for a major problem to solve! As I haven't had a focus on a specific health condition, my only criterion was to tackle a problem/condition that affects a large number of people and poses a challenge to societies and healthcare systems around the globe.
3. Team & Experience! The most important factor was to find a company that has an experienced management team. The (German) healthcare sector is especially strongly regulated. Experience and networks play a vital role to navigate this landscape successfully. Furthermore, I surmised, an experienced team would allow me to benefit from their learnings and further accelerate my own personal development.

Fast-forward to my first two months at HelloBetter. I am more than happy to be working for this company, and would like to share with you how my criteria apply to HelloBetter. But first, let me give you a general introduction to HelloBetter.

Who is HelloBetter?

HelloBetter is a global pioneer in the field of e-mental health, based in Berlin and Hamburg. The company was founded in 2015 under the name GET.ON Institut für Online Gesundheitstrainings GmbH by internationally renowned research psychologists, and in close partnership with one of the largest public health care insurance companies in Germany (Barmer). HelloBetter offers the widest range of evidence-based online mental health courses (guided and unguided) for prevention and treatment worldwide. The ten online courses cover:

Stress (the world’s most scientifically proven online course for preventing and coping with stress), COVID-19 related stress, Depression Prevention, Acute Depression, Diabetes & Depression, Chronic Pain, Insomnia, Alcohol Consumption, Panic and Anxiety, Genito-pelvic pain/penetration disorder (GPPPD), dyspareunia and vaginismus.

HelloBetter’s work has a strong scientific footing – the courses have been developed, evaluated, and implemented in the standard of care, and their effectiveness has been proven in over 30 randomised controlled trials (RCTs), with every course having at least one RCT. 

So far we have already helped more than 30.000 patients to lead happier lives. Through diverse partnerships with national and international research groups (including FAU Erlangen, University of Ulm, VU Amsterdam, and Harvard University), HelloBetter continues to bring innovative products into the standard of care.

After raising seed funding in August 2019, HelloBetter grew from 16 to now 60 employees, accompanied by exponential growth of revenue as well as client numbers. HelloBetter is growing its presence in Germany and Europe and in recent months also participated in the German Accelerator - Life Sciences program exploring market opportunities in the US.

So, how did my criteria apply to HelloBetter?

1. As I said before: Evidence is the currency to earn trust in healthcare. The body of evidence a company has been able to produce, validates its credibility and is one of the most important factors for digital health companies to enter into conversations about contracting and partnerships. Evidence verifies that your product works and shows exactly just how effective it really is. That’s where HelloBetter is unrivalled: First, no other provider worldwide has conducted as many clinical studies on the effectiveness of its online mental health courses. Secondly, most of our products have shown effect sizes on par with traditional face-to-face therapy. As HelloBetter was literally spun out of a research project and with three people on the management team having earned a Ph.D. in psychology, the scientific expertise is deeply rooted in the company’s DNA.

2. Look for a major problem to solve aka the Mental Health Tsunami is coming! Let's take a look at the pre-pandemic mental health numbers in Germany: 

• High prevalence: A fourth (27,8%) of the population in Germany suffers from a mental disorder in a given year.
• Long waiting times: 5 months (19,9 weeks) is the average waiting time to start psychotherapy treatment.
• Shortage of psychotherapists: The need for psychotherapeutic treatment has increased significantly over the past 15 years but the number of psychotherapists has not kept up with the demand.
• Costs: 44,4 billion € are the annual direct health economic costs due to mental illness in Germany.

Obviously, Germany is not the only country in the world that is facing these challenges. Let’s take a look at the US:

“One in five US adults and kids have a mental health or substance abuse issue according to a 2017 report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It’s a bigger “disease burden” in America than cancer or heart disease, but just 40% of adults and 50% of kids get help, the group found. There are lots of reasons. Some people are too embarrassed or afraid to reach out. But other common reasons found by the Kaiser Family Foundation line up with the yawning psychiatrist gap—people who couldn’t get help didn’t know where to turn. They couldn’t afford care. Or their insurance didn’t cover it.”

The COVID pandemic is worsening this development and more and more early warning signs of a Mental Health Tsunami are being reported almost daily.

Research has shown that the vast majority of people with lifetime disorders eventually make treatment contact but it often comes with a delay of several years (source 1, source 2, source 3, source 4). Furthermore, failure to make prompt initial treatment contact is a pervasive aspect of unmet need for mental health care in the United States. Interventions to speed initial treatment contact are likely to reduce the burdens and hazards of untreated mental disorder.

In Germany, some of the patients who come to see psychotherapists suffer from typical symptoms, but are not showing a severe mental health condition or illness yet. Consequently, these people need preventive services and support at an early stage to prevent them from actually becoming mentally ill and needing treatment. Of course, an average waiting time of 5 months does not help either...

In addition, research found (source 1, source 2) that people with mental health problems often would like to deal with their mental stress and symptoms on their own first before reaching out to a professional for help.

That's why I think that HelloBetter plays an important role for the future of mental health and healthcare in general as it empowers people to manage their own mental health and improve their quality of life – anywhere and at any time, with no waiting lists.

Its offering of ten mental health online courses provides a digital self-help solution with an optional human guidance component that is evidence-based, accessible, affordable, effective, and in high demand in these challenging times. So far, all courses are available in English and German!

3. Team & Experience! HelloBetter really excelled in building a strong management team and hiring the right people. This is not limited to the founding team but really holds true across the whole company. The company culture is an important element in this development. HelloBetter's Culture Guide really does give an accurate description of the overall experience. Genuinely nice people who enjoy getting-things done. As I can’t highlight all HelloBetter employees, I would briefly like to introduce you to the management team and provide some background on their experience and skill level.

• Assoc. Prof. Dr. David Daniel Ebert, Founder & CSO Managing Director: Professor Psychology & Digital Mental Health Care, TU Munich; President of International Society for Research on Internet Interventions, 200+ peer-reviewed articles, 9300+ citations
• Dr. Hanne Horvath, Founder & VP Business Development: Hanne built our sleep course to earn her Ph.D. in Psychology and completed her doctorate in psychology in 2016. She built HelloBetter (formerly GET.ON) as Managing Director from 2015 to 2019. Hanne is responsible for business development and services, as well as for expanding our partnerships and organizing psychologist support for our course participants.
• Dr. Elena Heber, Founder & VP Content and Research: Elena built our stress course to earn her Ph.D. in Psychology and completed her doctorate in psychology in 2016. She is responsible for the development and evaluation of our digital health products and heads our content and research department. 
• Hannes Kl?pper, Founder & CEO: Hannes is the founder and CEO of HelloBetter and responsible for the overall strategy and investor relations. Prior to joining HelloBetter, Hannes founded iversity, an online education startup with over 1 million course sign-ups and 100 partnering companies and institutions (now part of Springer Nature).  
• Philip Ihde, COO & Managing Director, is responsible for finance and HR, as well as regulatory and legal affairs. Most recently, he was Head of Finance and Operations at Media4Care GmbH, a Munich-based tech start-up developing a tablet solution for dementia patients. 
• Pierre Cantegril, VP Product, is responsible for product concept and design at HelloBetter. He was previously responsible for these topics as Head of Product at 8fit, a leading fitness app startup with 30 million users. Before that, he was CPO and then Managing Director of MONOQI’s B2B business unit. 
• Johannes Schatz, VP Marketing, is responsible for marketing and business intelligence. Prior to HelloBetter, Johannes worked as founder and managing director of LeROI Online Marketing GmbH (today Dept Data & Intelligence GmbH) and as founder and managing director of dealvertise GmbH. Johannes started his career at Rocket Internet where he quickly rose to Co-CMO Groupon International.
• Amit Gupta, VP Engineering is responsible for technical product development and infrastructure. Before joining the HelloBetter team, he was Director of Engineering at Curo Healthcare Technologies Pvt. Ltd, a solution to help diabetes patients manage their treatment plan. He was previously a senior engineer at Quovantis Technologies.

Conclusion

So, HelloBetter has the evidence, the team, a broad portfolio of products, and, now, captures a megatrend with momentum as Covid-19 is fast-forwarding digital health adoption. On top of that: Since October 2020, German physicians and psychotherapists are allowed to prescribe digital health applications which will be reimbursed by all of Germany’s statutory health insurance providers, covering 90% of the population, or roughly 73 million individuals.

If you would like to know more about the Digital Healthcare Act, check out this article. We are currently in the process of becoming an officially sanctioned Digital Health Application, eligible for reimbursement. Follow me, to learn more about this in the coming months.

This became way longer than I wanted, but there is just so much information to share about a rising digital mental health company in these challenging times. My first weeks at HelloBetter didn’t disappoint and I am curious what the future holds in store for us! If you would like to know more about HelloBetter, comment or send me a message!

If you made it this far, feel free to use and share our free “Calm through the Crisis” course which will help you strengthen your mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Over 8 weeks you'll learn everything you need to know to practice self-care and cope better with tension, worry, and fear that we all experience as we have to deal with the impact of the corona virus pandemic. On a side note: This free online course has been selected by the World Economic Forum as one of the world’s most outstanding initiatives in grappling with the pandemic’s aftermath. But as I said, there are still so many stories to tell about HelloBetter… To be continued.