Mainul I Mondal, Founder and CEO of Ellipsis Health
As we observe Mental Health Awareness Month, it is critical to highlight the need to destigmatize mental health issues in America. Sadly, more than half of people with mental illness do not receive help for their disorders, and nearly nine out of ten people with mental health problems say that stigma and discrimination have a negative effect on their lives.
At Ellipsis Health, our goal is for every person to have access to mental health professionals and treatment. To help facilitate this goal, our team works to eliminate the stigma related to behavioral health issues, improve communication between patients and providers and expand access to care.
When it comes to addressing behavioral health concerns, early identification of symptoms makes all the difference in the world, as it leads to better outcomes and can lessen long-term disability. Many people are afraid to ask, “Is how I am feeling normal?” It is critical that healthcare providers and their patients make time to talk about their behavioral health concerns and integrate health IT solutions to help them manage symptom identification at scale.
With Ellipsis Health, people can leverage our voice technology to understand their emotional health, which improves awareness of their feelings and can reveal if someone is at high risk for a mental health emergency before the situation becomes dire and has a greater impact on a person’s emotional and physical wellbeing.
Our app records a few minutes of a patient responding to questions, which they can do from the comfort of their homes and feel at ease answering the prompts without judgment or expectations from anyone. Our machine-learning algorithms then generate a data point on how that person is doing, which is shared with their healthcare providers – without requiring patients to come to an office or fill out a form.
Ellipsis enables providers to offer mental health screenings at scale – making mental wellness attainable for everyone. Without scalable solutions, patients are not identified early enough and often do not receive treatment until a crisis. Our technology is closing the screening gap by providing rapid screenings so payers and providers can identify and triage patients and members more effectively.
Once a patient is in treatment, Ellipsis Health’s clinical decision support tool offers weekly severity monitoring – giving providers a longitudinal view of a patient’s status, closing the monitoring gap and addressing the need for data on how patients are doing between sessions.
The path to emotional wellness for everyone everywhere means eliminating the stigma associated with mental illness. At Ellipsis Health, we are committed to ensuring behavioral healthcare is accessible to all by leveraging the ubiquity of smartphones to make identification and monitoring possible anytime, anywhere.