Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Mind-Gap (Bridging the treatment gap for mild and moderate anxiety and depression across EU)

Teaser

EU INDUSTRIAL AND SOCIETAL PROBLEMS:Paying customers of our ICBT marketplace are health providers, whereas our end-users are professionals in mental healthcare, General Practitioners (GPs) and patients with mild to moderate anxiety and depression.Despite the above-quantified...

Summary

EU INDUSTRIAL AND SOCIETAL PROBLEMS:
Paying customers of our ICBT marketplace are health providers, whereas our end-users are professionals in mental healthcare, General Practitioners (GPs) and patients with mild to moderate anxiety and depression.
Despite the above-quantified heavy toll on individuals, society and the economy, governments spend on average just 3% of their health budgets on mental health. GPs are in charge of identifying and referring but also of diagnosing and regularly treating people with mild to moderate mental disorders, meaning that patients only get access to mental health professionals when it degenerates in a severe disorder. Consequently, most of EU patients with mild-moderate depression or anxiety are mostly treated by GPs with high lack of resources, time and often not trained in national protocols for mental disorders (evidence-based therapies or best-practice methods listed by their NHS). Treatment for mild/moderate anxiety and depression is often given according to the all-or-no-principle, and patients are regularly prescribed to “do nothing” between follow-up medical visits. Passive patients who wait will in most cases have a worsened health in comparison with a patient who actively engaged between medical visits in a personalised treatment following health-promoting advices and therapies according to the level of severity of the illness.
Integration of ICBTs into NHSs is now on the EU agenda. Although NHSs start opening to ICBTs, current solutions are having a slow adoption by health professionals and patients, because they are too generic, difficult to integrate into health centres and generally repetitive and uninspiring to implement by both practitioners and patients.

OUR SOLUTION:
Our main innovation is a web-based ICBT marketplace formed by two modules, one for ICBT developments (by professionals) and another for usage (by patients under the prescription of professionals):
-ICBT development module or authoring tool is an easy-to-use, intuitive and web-based create-online-treatment framework where all practitioners, including those with very little technical knowledge, have a chance to develop their own ICBT. Our authoring tool integrates these new technologies to allow practitioners to think out of the box and develop innovative ICBTs (e.g. gamification, new engaging e-Learning tools and videos). Our marketplace is also a large-scale collaborative framework where different ICBTs can be combined (or trimmed) to create new ICBTs. All ICBTs will be verified by our internal team to guarantee that they integrate evidence-based therapies or best-practice methods listed by their NHS, but delivered to patients in innovative, engaging and stimulating ways to increase adoption and long adherence.
-ICBT usage module is what we call AssistedSelfHelp.com. Patients only get access to ICBTs in our marketplace under the prescription of a licensed practitioner. Practitioners can choose among ICBTs developed within their health centre, by other licensed health professionals outside their centres or ICBTs developed by us. ICBTs will be segmented for different target group of patients, and practitioners will see the effectiveness of each ICBT throughout the treatment lifetime: our platform integrates tests as part of the therapy to score standard measurements in psychology, and these data are used by a search engine for group segmentation to suggest the best ICBTs in our marketplace for each patient. Thus, health professionals can prescribe the best ICBT to the patient they are currently treating, and patients get access to specialised therapies from the onset and throughout the illness. In the EU-28, 82% of all individuals are well familiarised with internet, so in less than 2 minutes practitioners help patients to get started with the selected ICBT to be actively engaged in the treatment between the follow-up visits. This is the so-called blended treatment that has got the highest acceptance by practi

Work performed

Technological feasibility study: We have defined the specifications for new software as part of the technology maturation tasks to be implemented during the Phase 2. Moreover, we will establish objectives for undertaking a large-scale piloting in the Nordic countries, NL, and DE. We already got the support of key opinion leaders in NO, NL, SE and DK.

Regulatory feasibility study: In our regulatory study, we have listed all necessary legal actions, certification programs and guidelines that are required for e-mental health treatments in other EU countries. This task was implemented by our attorney specialised in this field, which is the largest law-firm in Southern Norway.

Market and commercialisation feasibility study: After the direct sales strategy on the Norwegian market, (max order of €130K/year, for higher amounts we must enter in a tender process), we have decided to follow a similar strategy for our other EU markets, finding out as well maximum budgets to skip tender processes.
Additionally, we have confirmed Denmark, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands as the EU countries that we will target as early adopters during our scale-up. We have found local partners in each country and we have established an exploitation and communication plan to establish our optimal go-to-market strategy.

Economic and financial feasibility study: We have carried out a full market research study by revisiting the competitors analysis (including pricing), interviews with potential customers to assess end-users needs at EU level (health providers, health professionals and patients), key stakeholders and engagement strategies. We have established our optimal international pricing strategy, based on our fruitful Norwegian experience. After evaluating our total investment requirements to bring the product to the market and update our financial projections for a 5-year period post-Phase 2 project.

Final results

Our key objective for this Phase 1 Feasibility Study was to verify the technical, practical and economic viability of Explorable for the markets in which we want to launch our product. More specifically, we aimed at verifying that our solution challenges the current status quo on the market and provides a superior performance in accompanying mental health treatments while saving costs over the treatment. Therefore, we conducted the following activities:
1. Detailed product development plan and plan for full large-scale piloting/validation;
2. Documentation detailing the legal frameworks and regulatory approach for Mind-Gap;
3. Comprehensive report on the market, competitor landscape and commercialisation plan;
4. Elaborated business plan, including full cost breakdown;
5. Establish final requirements for undertaking maturation and large-scale demonstrations under real operating conditions to be implemented in the envisaged Phase 2 project.

With the goal of confirming Explorable commercial viability and finding early adopters, we met with a major potential partners and healthcare providers in the target markets such as Denmark, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands. During these meetings we introduced them the superior performance of Explorable and how it improves the results of mental health treatments compared to any SoA solution. We plan now to collaborate with our potential partners in those markets to introduce Explorable via their professional network and knowledge of the local industry.

Website & more info

More info: http://elp.com.