In our latest interview series, we spoke with Rob Brougham, UK MD of Ieso Digital Health.
Ieso is a provider of digitally-enabled mental health care and delivers evidence-based cognitive behavioural therapy online (CBT) to patients suffering from depression, anxiety and other common mental health conditions. By combining the power of technology with personalised care, Ieso is redefining the way that mental health is provided by making high-quality care accessible, accountable and affordable for the first time. Ieso is available through the NHS Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme.
Ieso delivers 22% better outcomes compared to traditional therapy and 66% of sessions happen outside 9-to-5 office hours, either in the evenings or at weekends. The greater flexibility of digitally-enabled therapy is also reducing appointment no-shows by 31% compared to average national figures for traditional therapy. 48% more patients complete Ieso’s therapy, compared to the national average for treatment.
We ask what is unique about Ieso Digital Health?
Many digital health companies are still at the pilot stage. Ieso is delivering on the promise of digital health achieving real-world impact and changing the lives of people who suffer from mental health issues.
In what is a global first in mental health, Ieso has recently launched AI support tools to help therapists deliver improved outcomes in mental health. This ‘Clinical Decision Support tool’ empowers therapists to make effective clinical decisions that adhere to the evidence base. Ieso is the first provider in the world to augment one to one therapy in real-time with advanced analytics, machine learning, and natural language processing technologies.
Using our unique longitudinal, mental health data set which has been gathered from more than 25,000 patients and over 120,000 therapy hours, Ieso’s team of world-class data scientists and AI experts have for the first time used statistical techniques to create predictive computer models to help inform diagnosis decision making and predict patient engagement rates.
What is the most significant achievement for your organisation in the past 12 months?
Ieso is transforming mental health delivery in the UK, by making high quality, evidence-based cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) available to more than 9 million people. Relative to the international duration of treatment, Ieso can increase the speed at which people recover in treatment by as much as 50%.
In the final quarter of 2017, we announced the successful closure of an £18 million funding round to accelerate growth in the UK and US. This funding round was the largest amount raised by a digital behavioural health business in Europe.
What will be the most significant?
Mental health is the biggest unaddressed health challenge of our time and costs UK business between £70 and £100 billion each year. Research on the variance in mental health recovery rates is challenging in traditional environments and generally slow. Clearly, there is lots of opportunities to apply our unique data and advanced science and technology in mental health to research projects that can quickly inform better diagnosis and treatment and this is a major focus for the business right now.
What projects are you working on at the moment?
We are busy rolling out the first phase of our AI programme to our network of 500 accredited therapists to improve our capabilities and further drive up clinical outcomes to help more patients recover.
What problems and challenges are there to overcome?
It would be great to be able to offer access to digital mental care to people across the country, whenever and wherever they need it. We could do that if there was centralised procurement and a national reimbursement approach. That one action would dramatically improve access to treatment and to quality control and help the Government and the NHS deliver on their promises to people regarding mental health care.
At the moment, as there is no national approach to procuring digital health solutions, companies like Ieso must go to hundreds of different NHS Trusts and CCGs and sell to each organisation individually. That’s a slow process and means that only patients in certain parts of the country are able to access these services at present.
What is the biggest technology challenge?
The benefits of digital mental health are clear and offer vast potential for patients and health providers. However, in some places there remains a big challenge around technology adoption. Many procurement departments and organisations look to innovations to produce short-term cash-releasing savings, rather than identifying where innovations can transform care pathways and lead to more efficient services. Fortunately, there are many organisations that do understand the potential. Examples amongst our customers include Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust, Cambridge and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust and the CCGs in the East Riding of Yorkshire and across Surrey. It’s heartening to see that this approach is spreading so that, over time, more patients will benefit.
What is new for Ieso Digital Health?
One of the major advantages of Ieso’s digital care pathway is that its data-driven approach enables us to conduct ground-breaking scientific research. One such exciting project that we are currently working on is being led by Dr Andy Blackwell our Chief Scientific Officer, Dr Ana Catarino, Senior Scientist and Dr Jonathan Fawcett of The Memorial University of Newfoundland, has been looking at depression. This research has shown strong evidence that there are different subtypes of depression, which may respond differently to different treatment protocols. We are working to apply the findings to improve recovery rates for patients with depression.
