Mental health tech refers to services that help treat mental health conditions via mobile and/or online platforms. A main function of mental health tech platforms is to connect physicians and practitioners directly to individuals without barriers such as a lack of proximity, prohibitive cost, or long wait times in the doctor’s office.
The mental health tech ecosystem is broad and includes telepsychiatry platforms, digital therapeutics, monitoring/measuring tools, and peer to peer apps. Telepsychiatry is at the forefront of the industry and has been gaining traction with a growing number of users. Monitoring/ measuring tools follow, but the services have yet to see mass adoption. Digital therapeutics (software-based therapeutic interventions given directly to individuals for preventing, managing, or treating mental disorders) is an emerging segment, and it shows great potential.
Incumbents in the industry deliver telepsychiatry services as part of their telemedicine services while disruptors specializing in mental health tech have successfully established their foothold in the market mainly due to the increasing number of mental health patients. Most of the disruptors are concentrated in the telepsychiatry segment, given its popularity of facilitating live interaction sessions with psychiatrists as an alternative to in-person doctor visits.
The mental health tech space currently has around 340 startups comprising telepsychiatry platforms, digital therapeutics, monitoring/measuring tools and peer-to-peer apps (the segments focused on in this report). By numbers, monitoring and measuring and telepsychiatry form the bulk of the sector’s startups. In terms of funding, however, digital therapeutics takes the largest share, despite its smaller number of startups. Digital therapeutics’ larger funding share could be explained via its products’ prescription-based nature, which calls for heavy investments before passing stringent regulatory compliance.
The incumbents in the mental health tech industry are mainly established telehealth players that have expanded their virtual care scope to cover mental health. Many leading telehealth players have already ventured into the mental health market by acquiring mental health telehealth providers.
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