Meeting growing mental health needs means not only providing new treatments, but also dedicating more resources to researching the effectiveness of existing drugs and therapies.This requires the collection of large amounts of data to fill the research gaps, which is the main focus of the research Osminde— A San Francisco startup led by scientists, technologists and psychiatrists.To help support the work it is doing in this area, the company Announce On Tuesday, it had raised $40 million to expand its mental health research and treatment platform.
“Our funding enables us to continue to help the medical community advance life-saving mental health interventions,” Osmind’s CEO and co-founder Lucia Huang said in an email.
The Series B investment was led by DFJ Growth. New investors Susa Ventures, Lachy Groom, Brent Saunders (former CEO and chairman) Allergan and current Osmind board members), Helena Goodman and Ariel Katz (CEOs H1), with contributions from existing investors General Catalyst, Future Ventures, Tiger Global and Pear VC.
This round brings Osmind’s total raised to $57 million since the company launched in 2020. That includes $15 million in Series A funding last year and $2 million in seed funding raised in 2020.Following the latest funding round, partner Justin Kao, co-founder of DFJ Growth spiralwill join Osmind’s Board of Directors.
According to the company, Osmind helps the medical community manage treatments and track and study the effectiveness of those treatments for the 14 million U.S. patients with moderate and severe mental illness. The startup earns research insights by selling software to mental health providers and building commercial relationships with life sciences organizations to help patients have safer and broader access to mental health treatment, Huang said.
Mental health providers use Osmind’s software and electronic health records to care for patients and conduct their practices. Osmind then works with scientists to analyze the information entered into the software (patient details are anonymized to protect privacy) to understand which treatments work best for individuals and to improve the design of clinical trials for new treatments.
The startup is currently conducting multiple studies with collaborators at the Stanford University School of Medicine that are expected to shed more light on the effectiveness of treatments like ketamine, which has received only limited research. Osmind has teamed up with medical scientists at Stanford University to release what the company says is the largest real-world data set study Ketamine infusion therapy published in March in the Journal of Affective Disorders. The analysis found that ketamine was a fast, effective and long-lasting treatment for depression, with more than 70 percent of the patients enrolled in the study who initially had suicidal thoughts showing improvement.
In addition to supporting research, the funds raised by Osmind will be used to continue developing and expanding its electronic health records for mental health research and treatment, as well as nearly doubling the size of its team and expanding the company’s San Francisco office from 50 people Increase to 100, Huang said.
A range of companies are now connecting patients with in-person and virtual mental health treatment.
“Over the past few years, mental health startups have proliferated,” Huang said. “However, little attention has been paid to patients with moderate to severe mental health conditions.”
But there are also companies that are helping to address this need.These include keena mental health platform for people with severe mental illness; and shaftwhich specializes in treating the most vulnerable patients, such as those requiring inpatient mental health care.
Still, Huang emphasized that Osmind’s model is different from other mental health startups. She reiterated that it is not about providing direct clinical care, but supporting mental health providers and ensuring that patients with serious mental illness get the help they need.
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