Words have power. Today, with the advancements in technology, words can play an important role in your health by helping you and those who care for you better understand and manage your levels of stress, anxiety, and depression. Gaining insights around your behavioral health is now as easy as monitoring your heart rate, measuring your blood sugar, or tracking whether you’re getting enough sleep.
Voice analysis technology now enables a real-time assessment of your stress, anxiety and depression – anywhere and at any time – advancing clinical care coordination, eliminating gaps in care, and transforming the personal care journey of ourselves and our loved ones.
The growing need for objective and scalable solutions in mental health care
Pre COVID-19 the rates of anxiety and depression in the United States were staggering. Now, with the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to surge and new variants on the rise, there is an unprecedented demand for resources to help better understand and manage the severity of stress, anxiety and depression. Today, 28 percent of people in the U.S. have depression and 36 percent are suffering from anxiety and 41 percent are reporting mental health disorders. That’s nearly half of the U.S. population. The American Psychological Association’s 2021 research found that psychologists reported the greatest increases in treating anxiety disorders (84%, up from 74%), depressive disorders (72%, up from 60%), and trauma (and stress) related disorders (62%, up from 50%). Given the increased demand for mental health services, it is no surprise that psychologists also reported increased workloads, longer waitlists, and low capacity for taking on new patients. In terms of overall number of patients, 43% of psychologists reported an increase this year, with 41% reported being unable to meet demand for treatment (up from 30% in 2020).
Digital tools have the potential to be used more widely to address the growing demand and the severe shortage of mental health care providers in the U.S. Estimates project a shortage of between 14,280 and 31,091 psychiatrists by 2024. The imbalance between the supply and demand of mental health care providers has created severe access problems for both insured and uninsured people.
Harnessing the unique power of voice to pioneer a new clinical standard in mental health care
Voice is universally used as a measure of wellbeing. How you speak conveys your internal state through your tone, rhythm and emotion – in addition to the words you use or the ideas you speak about. Every day, healthcare providers, payers, caregivers and loved ones use voice to share critical information. Despite the billions of conversations that happen each day, this rich source of information has largely been untapped and therefore – unable to improve patient health through measurement-based care. Until now.
Ellipsis Health has pioneered technology that is harnessing the unique power of your voice – by using a short sample of the words you say (semantics) and how you say them (acoustics) – to identify your severity of stress, anxiety and depression. We can do this at scale – regardless of geography, speaking ability, or accent – with no baseline needed. Thus, establishing a new clinical standard in mental health care.
Scalable clinical decision support tools will transform mental health care
New digital applications like Ellipsis Health’s solutions can make measurement-based mental health care possible – anytime, anywhere – and remove the guesswork surrounding care decisions and interventions.
By empowering clinicians and payers with real-time mental health assessments during and in between care appointments, they are able to efficiently provide the right level of care at the right time. This allows care teams to identify early signs of mental health conditions, easily monitor how treatments are working, and be alerted if a person is in need of intervention – avoiding the devastating ripple effects of untreated mental health and crisis events.
Join our commitment to a healthier future
There has never been a more important time than now to come together. We’re grateful to the community of innovators and leaders who have joined us in responding to the needs in mental health care. We, along with our innovative and forward-thinking partners including Cigna Corporation’s international business, are dedicated to advancing voice technology for behavioral health treatment and revolutionizing access to stress, anxiety and depression identification and management.
By banding together we will be able to address the tidal wave of consequences associated with undiagnosed behavioral health conditions. When we embrace and promote the power of measurement-based mental health care we can begin to identify the far too many people who are suffering in silence – their struggles undetected by both their loved ones and medical providers.
We know there is much work to be done to change the mental health landscape. Our passionate team will continue to address the growing need for accessible, quality mental health care by continuing our partnerships with payers, care providers and digital health platforms to improve behavioral health screening, longitudinal monitoring, and treatment efficacy. We invite you to join us.
