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Problem Tech Solves
Tech Brief
Mental health is more than the absence of mental illness. Everyone has mental health. It’s a continuum that one will likely move back and forth on throughout their lives. But the largest portion of the population needs resources and encouragement to learn behaviors and personal tools that support mental good health—before they get to a more critical tipping point. Not all mental wellbeing apps are created equal. It’s important to look for an app that is based in science, supports a range of mental health concerns and is as easy for employers and health plans to implement as it is to use. Our goal at Koa health is to minimize that friction to increase the impact and efficacy of mental health programs. That’s why we rely on expert psychologists to develop our user-facing content and programs. Our CEO, Oliver Harrison, is a MD psychiatrist & has an MPh in Public Health from John Hopkins, our product team is stacked with dozens of PhDs and our science advisory board includes top experts in mental health—like former Director of the National Institute of Mental Health, Tom Insel, and Chief of Psychology at Mass General Hospital & Harvard Medical School professor, Sabine Wilhelm. By taking a digital approach to providing personalized, evidence-based content, Koa Health is reaching individuals across the care continuum—including the majority population that falls within the “missing middle.” In other words, we’re helping people who need more than deep breathing exercises and guided meditations, but don’t need or don’t want face-to-face care.
Tech Differentiators
Koa Health is on a mission to create simple, personalized and accessible mental wellbeing support by combining evidence, cutting-edge tech and user-centered design. With help from our team of researchers, data scientists, clinicians and engineers, we’re leveraging technology and research to enable people to change their behaviors with effective support that adapts to their unique circumstances. Ethics is intrinsic to issues of health and healthy behaviors. Koa Health is the only solution provider in our industry to have committed to an ethical framework, investing over 10,000 hours and €1 million in our comprehensive ethics strategy. We’re publicly committed to a set of ethical principles, developed and tested a range of ideas, underwent two external audits on the implementation for our ethical approach and published peer-reviewed research on avoiding bias in our products. Our ethical principles include: - Improving health and happiness for everyone, without bias - Putting users in control of their data - Being understandable and transparent - Securing user data - Being accountable to users and society At Koa Health, our ethical principles are at the core of everything we do. Mental health for all means offering approachable, inclusive support that meets users’ ever-changing needs, whenever they need it. We use non-gendered, non-biased images and language—aiming for a reading age of 11—across our products and services. Koa Health also undergoes an annual external audit run by Eticas, the global leader in applied ethics. The results of our annual audit are published on our website for transparency and accountability.
Validation
This year, Koa Health announced the results of a randomized control trial (RCT) for the efficacy of our evidence-based mental wellbeing app, Koa Foundations. Conducted from April 2020-May 2020, this RCT set out to prove how Koa Foundations could help adults better manage mental wellbeing and associated common mental health disorders including stress, sleep, anxiety and resilience. The RCT showed that adults using Koa Foundations improved their mental wellbeing against the WHO-5 scale after two weeks and by more than a fifth (21%) on average after four weeks— significantly higher than the control group whose improvement was negligible, with an average improvement of only 1%. The data revealed the potential of Koa Foundations to significantly improve mental wellbeing. After four weeks of use, Koa Foundations’ users also saw: -> 33% improvement in sleep quality measured against the Minimal Insomnia Scale (MISS), compared with 12% for the control group. -> 23% improvement in feelings of anxiety measured against the Generalized Anxiety Disorder scale (GAD-7), more than 2x the statistical improvement over the control group’s 11% improvement. -> 10% improvement in resilience, compared to the control group which had a negligible improvement of 1%; measured against the 10-item Connor-Davidson Resilience scale (CD-RISC-10). -> 19% reduction in stress, compared a 14% reduction in the control group; measured against the 10-item Perceived Stress Score (PSS). Based on these results, Koa Health did a modeling exercise with the London School of Economics that showed a 5x return on investment, based on decreased absenteeism and increased productivity, for Koa Foundations.
