In a field that ranges from text therapy, to AI-based chatbots to guided meditation, some mental health startups are pursuing a different niche: therapy for children and youth. And only for these.
HelloHero, a company focused on teletherapy for children and young people up to 21 years old (the average user is 10 years old), obtained a seed round of 7.7 million dollars, with a credit line of 4.5 million from Silicon Valley Bank. This funding round follows a rebranding of the company and plans to delve further into data-driven teletherapy.
HelloHero is the brainchild of Syed Mohammed, who struggled with dyslexia as a child but was not diagnosed until adulthood. After benefiting from therapy as an adult, he has focused on developing a teletherapy program that is offered through schools or directly to families. That platform was initially called Enable My Child (founded in 2018). But the company has recently changed its name to HelloHero.
So far, HelloHero has provided teletherapy to a total of 3.800 children, approximately 1.800 of whom have been served this year.
HelloHero is not the only player in the children's teletherapy space. Dotcom Therapy, a company founded in 2015 to offer therapy through school districts also raised in a round of 13 million). Although HelloHero has some similar issues to other teletherapy companies (largely leveraging clinical expertise to get therapists into schools that may not have them), its focus is very technology-centric. Mohammed has spent a lot of time thinking about using technology to improve therapy itself and creating tools to connect schools, insurance companies and parents.
“What we have built here is the health system that is connected to the clients, to the families and children and to the therapists,” Mohammed said.
Any child who wears HelloHero It begins with a treatment plan established by a therapist. After each therapy session administered with HelloHero, therapists and parents are asked to assess the child's clinical progress. All these data are collected by the platform HelloHero, which, as Mohammed explains, is used to adjust from week to week.
“We have generationally improved the way progress is tracked,” Mohammed argues.
That's not the only benefit of collecting information this way. Session-level data linking therapy to clinical progress (or lack thereof) has already proven to be a powerful asset for companies.
On a much larger scale, that's it, a UK-based text therapy company that closed in a round of Serie B of $53 million, also asked participants to rate their progress over the course of treatment. The result is a massive data set linking certain therapeutic techniques to clinical outcomes (resulting in already published and accessible research). That data set has become a major attraction point for investors.
HelloHero it appears to be building a dataset of its own linked to outcomes and aims to use it to provide more automated therapeutic tools.
Mohammed plans to develop a data-driven tool to guide therapists through their own sessions. He would provide real-time advice on a therapist's screen during the session, based on what has worked (and hasn't worked) before.
On the current platform HelloHero, advice is already provided before or after the sessions are completed, says Mohammed. But the company plans to bring real-time "on-screen intelligence" to life over the next year.
Aside from on-screen intelligence, HelloHero has sought to differentiate its platform on the backend. HelloHero has built its own electronic medical record system and payment platform that is "connected" to private insurers and Medicaid.
“I asked our CTO how much code we really have, and he explained: think of us as a regional bank. That's how great our technology is,” Mohammed said.
As for the therapy itself, HelloHero has two branches of the business: the first is based on direct collaborations with schools. The company contracts with 500 schools and more than 100 actively provide therapy.
The second arm is a direct-to-family program, offering specialized courses for children and parents (programs include screen time management or eating difficulties, as examples). Now direct-to-family programs make up 8 to 10 percent of the business, says Mohammed. Looking ahead, the company plans to invest more in this aspect of the business.
Thanks to this round, the company also plans to focus on incorporating expertise in three areas: insurance integration, child psychology and technology.
