Eleos Health: Reducing the Workforce Burden on Mental Health
The Driver:
Eleos Health recently announced that it raised $40M in a Series B funding, which was led by Menlo Ventures, and with participation from F-Prime Capital, Eight Roads, Arkin Digital Health, Samsung Next, and ION. Eleos Health has raised a total of $68M and plans to use the proceeds to fuel the company's product development plans - which include new and enhanced AI solutions for group therapy sessions, compliance automation, case management, concurrent documentation, and value-based care support as well as accelerate their hiring efforts
Key Takeaways:
47% of the U.S. population live in a Mental Health Workforce Shortage area and it’s been estimated that in 2021, 57.8M or 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. are living with mental Illness (Psychology Today & NIMH)
In 2022, there were 196,000 employed psychologists compared to 816,900 physicians in the United States, with a 6% projected growth by 2030 (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
The prevalence of mental illness is higher among young adults (18-25) vs. adults aged 26-49 years and older (50+), yet the percentage of young adults who receive mental health services is lower than both groups (NIMH)
While approximately 1 in 10 people may need to use an out-of-network medical specialist, nearly 3 in 10 need to use an out-of-network therapist or prescriber to meet their mental health needs (Colorado Behavioral Healthcare Council)
The Story:
Eleos was founded by CEO Alon Joffe, COO Dror Zaide, and CTO/CSO Alon Rabinovich all of whom served together in the Israeli military, where they saw first-hand the effects of PTSD and have witnessed the administrative barriers clinicians face. As noted by Joffe, "we started Eleos after personally witnessing the immense administrative barriers facing clinicians - through our own experiences and those of our loved ones. The providers will always be the heroes of the care story — we're just here to help them write it better and faster." According to the company, Eleos Health is a breakthrough clinical application for voice AI, operating ambiently in the background of behavioral health clinician-patient conversations (with full patient consent and permission). This allows Eleos to accurately interpret, analyze and document behavioral health conversations, thereby reducing the operational burden on providers while unlocking objective insights into evidence-based care and the therapeutic alliance.
The Differentiators:
Eleos CareOps automated technology uses a voice-based Natural Language Processing (NLP), a behavioral health-specific large language model, that interprets, analyzes, and documents conversations between patient and provider during a session. This strategy enables providers to focus on patient care and effective diagnosing, by identifying empirically supported interventions and intervention strategies directly from the session, rather than focusing on administrative work. As noted by the company, given that 30 million Americans are living with untreated mental health conditions, even using the most optimistic math illustrates that the current supply of 600,000 active licensed U.S. therapists will still fall far short of meeting patient demand.
As a result, the U.S. needs to dramatically expand its behavioral health workforce of existing mental health care providers who are currently reporting burnout rates as high as nearly 80% among some (ex: psychiatrists). By contrast, using the Eleos system, the company claims 90% of notes can be generated within 24 hours, in a HIPAA-compliant format that reduces insurance denials due to late submission. Moreover, the company states on average, it can cut clinician documentation time by 40% and year-to-data it has analyzed more than 3 million minutes of therapy sessions saving more than 300 days of documentation time across all providers and organizations.
The Big Picture:
According to the American Psychological Association, the percentage of psychologists reported not being able to meet the demands of increased workload has steadily risen from 30% in 2020 and 41% in 2021, to 46% in 2022. Given the shortage of providers, systems like Eleos Health which saves documentation time and increases patient-facing time are desperately in need. For example, while approximately 1 in 10 people may need to use an out-of-network medical specialist, nearly 3 in 10 need to use an out-of-network therapist and prescriber to meet their mental health needs. Not only can paperwork burden lead to burnout as noted above but as noted by the Colorado Behavioral Healthcare Council its various components can lead to almost 50% of mental healthcare professionals being dissatisfied with the time spent on paperwork due to: duplicate processes, lengthy admission processes and less time with their clients. Clearly, while generative AI and AI-based voice assistants will need to have very specific privacy and data controls, they can be a vital component of workforce effectiveness in mental health.
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