Delivering the next generation of digital mental healthcare

Eight Billion Minds is a new digital therapeutics program from Ieso Digital Health with a vision to remove barriers to mental healthcare for millions of people around the world by delivering efficacious and regulated digital therapeutics for prescription use.

1 in 4adults

experience at least 1 diagnosable mental health problem in any year (1).

$16trillion

expected global cost 2010-2030 as a result of inaction to mental illness (2).

200,000hours

of real-world data from Ieso’s internet-enabled CBT platform (3).

By applying deep learning and clinical data science to hundreds of thousands of hours of real-world therapy data, Eight Billion Minds is determining what really works to help patients get better. Eight Billion Minds is developing new technology to deliver accessible and personalised psychological therapy on a global scale.

Blog

Ieso Hits Major Milestones in 2019

Ieso Digital Health, a leader in internet-enabled cognitive behavioural therapy (ie-CBT), is pleased to announce a momentous 2019, with many significant milestones met. Having been crowned business of the year at the Business Weekly awards and joining the Future Fifty Cohort early on in the year, Ieso went on to launch its DTx programme, Eight Billion Minds, in September to realise its vision to remove barriers in mental healthcare for millions of people globally. That same month, Ieso expanded its ie-CBT service to include Step 2 therapy to help address the 76.6 % of NHS IAPT (Increasing Access to Psychological Therapies) referrals needing low intensity mental health treatment. The service will be fully available to all NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) from January 2020.

Ieso Launches Clinical Research Trial to Treat Comorbid Depression and Anxiety in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes

Ieso to treat approximately 500 patients with tailored, online cognitive behavioural therapy to measure the effects of treatment Ieso Digital Health, a leader in internet-enabled cognitive behavioural therapy (ie-CBT), today announced its clinical trial to measure the effects of online, diabetes-focused CBT intervention on the mental health outcomes of patients with type 2 diabetes. Studies have found that mental health issues amongst those diagnosed with diabetes are far greater than for those without diabetes, with 25% reported to live with depression and 40% with anxiety . This study will help Ieso understand more about whether treating a mental health condition in the context of diabetes has a positive impact on mental wellbeing and subsequently diabetes management for patients.

Q&A: Ieso Digital Health’s SVP of AI on digital therapeutics and the new Eight Billion Minds project

The digital therapeutics field has attracted the interest of major players in the healthcare industry lately, from big pharma to the NHS. But there is debate among stakeholders around issues including reimbursement, regulation and business models that work. The space, however, continues to grow, and Cambridge-headquartered Ieso Digital Health unveiled earlier this year plans to build an autonomous digital therapeutic through its new Eight Billion Minds research project. Last week, MobiHealthNews caught up with Valentin Tablan, SVP of AI at the British mental health startup, to find out his thoughts on the current state of the digital therapeutics space and the new initiative.

How technology can be used to help mental health therapy

Ieso’s senior VP for artificial intelligence, Valentin Tablan, talks about the challenges of adopting technology in mental health and how things are changing through Ieso’s Eight Billion Minds program. Compared to physical medicine, mental health has traditionally been slow in its adoption of technology. There are multiple reasons for this, some psychological, some organisational, and some technological. Physical medicine has seen a lot of progress in the last century as science and technology advances have led to better understanding of diseases and patients. CAT and MRI scanners, and advanced lab tests make it easier to diagnose, treat and design personalised interventions for medical conditions. Mental health lags well behind, and still relies mainly on the skills and intuitions of practitioners, unaided by technology. One possible reason for this is that a large part of the information relevant to the treatment of mental health conditions is only available as natural language communication. Historically, we have focused less on how to objectively analyse this type of data than, for example, blood chemistry.

Ieso launches Eight Billion Minds to address unmet global mental health needs

New digital therapeutics program to exploit major scientific discoveries from deep learning analysis of 200,000 hours of patient therapy Ieso Digital Health, a leader in internet-enabled cognitive behavioural therapy (IECBT), today launches Eight Billion Minds™, a new digital therapeutics program aiming to address the global and regional shortages of mental health therapists. Eight Billion Minds is building the next generation of mental healthcare based on analysis of high volume, real-world clinical data from Ieso’s IECBT platform, ThinkWell™, with a vision to make mental health treatments accessible for all. Combining practical knowledge of delivering differentiated clinical outcomes with the application of deep learning to hundreds of thousands of hours of therapy, the company has decoded what works in real-world clinical settings and plans to use new technology to distribute highly personalized therapies on a scale that is just not possible in 1:1 delivery.

Science

Data-driven insights into effective therapy

How can new technology accelerate the development and delivery of digital therapeutics for mental health conditions?

Due to a global scarcity of therapists, the 1:1 therapy model faces limitations, with millions of people worldwide unable to access mental health treatment. Care quality and patient outcomes are often left unmeasured, with the therapy being delivered only as good as the individual therapist delivering the care.

Eight Billion Minds is addressing these issues and changing the future of how therapy is delivered around the world by using deep learning and data science, applied to its own unique data set, to understand what aspects of therapy really work.

So how do we do this?

1: Capture large volumes of therapy data from Ieso’s internet-enabled cognitive behavioural therapy (ie-CBT) service platform.

2: Apply deep learning, natural language processing (NLP) and clinical science to gain understanding of therapy-related language and what aspects of psychotherapy are most effective, for better targeted interventions.

3: By learning what works in real-world clinical settings, create new clinically engaging and effective digital therapeutics models to address unmet mental health needs which are scalable and autonomous.

4: Share new knowledge to services and clinicians to improve engagement and efficacy of traditional therapy.

Eight Billion Minds is the only company with the data to show which components of therapy are most effective for different types of patient. By learning from the best therapists, Ieso has the ability to improve recovery rates with its ie-CBT tool, and is now taking these learnings to develop scalable digital treatments within Eight Billion Minds to remove barriers to quality mental healthcare globally.

Ieso’s recovery rates surpass normal targets.

Recovery rates consistently improve in consecutive cohorts of 300 patients, which were used in order to control for the reliability of each measure of recovery.

Team

Passionate about improving access to mental health therapy

Dr Nigel Pitchford

Chief Executive Officer

Nigel became CEO of Ieso Digital Health in March 2019, having previously been the Chief Investment Officer and a group board director for Touchstone Innovations plc. Nigel led the team that created Eight Billion Minds, and is highly-regarded within the UK life sciences community, bringing significant fundraising, strategic and operational experience to the company.

Dr Andy Blackwell

Group Chief Science and Strategy Officer

At Ieso Digital Health, Andy’s principle role is to develop and implement a global science and technology strategy to complement the commercial vision of the company. As one of the leads in the development of Eight Billion Minds at Ieso, Andy has been instrumental in creating a business focused on using available real-world therapy data to address the unmet needs in mental health.

Sarah Bateup

Chief Clinical Officer

Sarah is a BABCP (British Association of Behavioural & Cognitive Psychotherapists) accredited cognitive behavioral therapist, and has delivered over 27,000 hours of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to people across the UK. Sarah is responsible for all clinical management at Ieso, including therapist supervision and quality monitoring, She has been instrumental in analysing the data which will be used by Eight Billion Minds.

Dr Valentin Tablan

Senior VP, Artificial Intelligence

Valentin has spent 20 years in the field of Natural Language Processing, Knowledge Representation, and Artificial Intelligence. As SVP AI, at Ieso, Valentin and his team are responsible for applying advanced deep learning techniques to Ieso’s vast data set to determine which evidence-based therapy interventions are most effective. Under his leadership, Ieso has created the industry’s first AI-enabled tools that augment real-world data to increase quality and improve clinical outcomes.

Dr Jennifer Gentile

Senior VP, US Clinical Operations

Jennifer is a leader in the telehealth industry who provides leadership for US clinical operations and quality, and plays a key role in business and product development. She is responsible for ensuring that patients receive the highest quality care delivered by highly trained therapists supported by AI Therapist Assistants. Dr. Gentile works with key opinion leaders and stakeholders to secure success in the US healthcare marketplace.

Publications

Deep learning study reveals psychotherapy features related to patient improvement

Ieso Digital Health applies deep learning to large-scale clinical data to understand what aspects of psychotherapy content are associated with clinical outcomes. This study demonstrates the potential of what can be learnt when using real-world data and what could be achieved when these methods are applied to improve clinical practice and create digital therapeutics. The paper, ‘Quantifying the association between psychotherapy content and clinical outcomes using deep learning’, is published in JAMA Psychiatry, a peer-reviewed and highly-cited journal globally with more than 4.8 million article views and downloads annually.

View publication

Contact

Get in touch to find out more.

Address

The Jeffreys Building
Cowley Road
Cambridge
Cambridgeshire
CB4 0DS

Email us and one of our representatives will be in touch shortly.

8bminds@iesohealth.com

Phone

Alternatively, give us a call to chat directly to a representative.

+44 (0) 1223 608 760

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Global Mental Health Commission
Global Health Observatory Data Repository
Ieso Digital Health dataset. Ieso applies organisational measures to ensure appropriate security and confidentiality of data, and provides transparency via the privacy notices.
World Health Organization Fact Sheet on Depression