#GDBHT2020 Spotlight: OPTT
How to launch a digital clinic, you ask? The OPTT team met with Solome to talk about the work they do, how organizations can deploy scalable mental health services, as well as the types of partners they work with like ACOs, PCPs and more. Tune in to the conference on Wednesday to hear their CMO, Dr. Nazanin Alavi, discuss how to launch a digital mental health clinic at the conference.
What is OPTT?
OPTT is a digital mental health platform that empowers providers to offer continuous & customized support to their patients in an accessible & scalable way. The addition of our digital mental health tools and supervised asynchronous digital therapy programs can reduce the time and cost up to 4 times.OPTT exploits new capacities provided by digital delivery of mental healthcare, like continuous health data collection and integration using wearable devices, to develop a holistic and comprehensive approach that not only addresses a patient’s current clinical needs, but also prevents, predicts and manages any future relapses through a long-term care approach for mental health problems.
What kind of organizations are you typically partnering with to deliver OPTT’s services?
OPTT is a software as a service (SaaS) platform, designed for health organizations, with a B2B business model. As the core offering of our platform is to increase efficiency of care in a long-term care structure, our main customers are value based primary care organizations, like accountable care organizations (ACOs) and virtual first primary care groups, with a mandate to offer long-term high quality care at the lowest cost.
Mental and behavioral health care is a major parameter ACOs are evaluated on and 86% of ACOs are interested in implementing behavioral health care in their services. This is specially important considering that many chronic situations managed by ACOs, get multiple times more expensive if accompanied with behavioral health comorbidities (e.g. average yearly Medicaid costs for someone with diabetes, are below $10,000 for those with no behavioral health condition, but more than $35,000 for those who have a mental illness and substance use issue).
We are also partnering with more modern primary care networks focused on delivering chronic care management. Chronic disease management accounts for a staggering 90% of the $3.3 trillion annual health care expenditure in the US, with mental health share amounting to ~$150 billion per year. That is why many new primary care networks (e.g., CarbonHealth, One Medical and Parsley Health) and even big retail enterprises (e.g. CVS, Walmart and Amazon) are focusing their attention to providing long-term care services using innovative approaches like Quartet health, Omada health, Livongo and Cityblock.
These long-term care models not only provide a better outcome for the patients, they also provide better business opportunities for companies, guaranteeing long-term recurring revenue. What is missing in this market is a product focused on delivering chronic care management for mental health problems. With a potential saving of $15 billion per year through chronic management of mental health problems, we believe OPTT would be a great solution for any of these chronic health focused organizations to add to their current offerings.
How has COVID-19 played a role in the services you provide at OPTT?
The recent COVID-19 pandemic has affected many aspects of our social life and its negative consequences on the Canadian public health go far beyond the direct overload of the hospital care system. Self-isolation and financial uncertainty can significantly deteriorate individuals’ mental health, which is only going to get worse with prolonged physical distancing strategies. Adding to this is the personal and public trauma of lost lives and soon we will have an unprecedented epidemic of mental health problems with crushing effects on the public health sector and economy. To meet this huge new demand for an already strained health system, there is a need for innovative new approaches that significantly expand the capacity of care delivery. While it may not be possible in the short term to increase the number of mental healthcare providers or the number of hours they work,, improving their time spent efficiently might be the solution. Virtual care and online delivery of psychotherapy, shown to be clinically effective, efficient and cost effective, might be the perfect solution to address the high demand we face now.
As a leading developer of digital therapeutic content and delivery solutions for behavioral health, we have allocated all our resources and attention to the current crisis. We have developed COVID-19 specific modules to complement our existing clinically validated depression and anxiety solutions, empowering healthcare providers to increase access and care capacity by 4X. In addition, to facilitate rapid deployment of our solution, our technical team has developed new procedures that allow our white label solution to be deployed in one week.
Our COVID-19, CBT modules are focused on coping skills and resilience building which have been shown to be effective in the treatment of mood and anxiety disorders. These modules are designed to address anxiety and depressive symptoms caused by fear of illness or concerns about personal safety. The content is focused on problem solving techniques, with mindfulness practices included, to help build healthy coping skills to address the uncertainties surrounding the pandemic. As with all our other therapeutic modules, to clinically validate the COVID-19 content, our clinical research team, led by OPTT co-founders, Drs. Alavi and Omrani, has secured a highly competitive research grant from Queen’s University COVID-19 Rapid Response Funding, to address mental health challenges of those affected by the pandemic, using this content.
How can interested audience members get involved?
To do our part to help healthcare organizations support those struggling with mental health challenges during this pandemic, we are waiving our license costs for the first 100 patients! Any interested audience member, both clinicians or organizations, interested to learn more about our services, could contact us at info@optt.ca or visit our website www.optt.ca. We would be happy to give them a tour of our platform and therapeutic modules, and even provide them a demo clinic to test OPTT’s capabilities themselves.
About Solome: Solome Tibebu is the Founder and CEO of Cognific, a behavioral health and human services technology strategist, an early-stage investor and Founder of the Going Digital: Behavioral Health Tech summit. She is passionate about frontier technologies and creative solutions which transform health equity and access. Solome and her team have consulting funds, foundations, early-stage digital health startups, large chronic disease companies, and health systems and health plans all about behavioral health technology. Solome is a board director and advisor to various non-profits and for-profit companies in behavioral health, human services and venture capital.
About OPTT: OPTT is a digital mental health platform that empowers providers to offer continuous & customized support to their patients in an accessible & scalable way. The addition of our digital mental health tools and supervised asynchronous digital therapy programs can reduce the time and cost up to 4 times.
