
Empowering mental wellness with digital screening
Helping Medibio improve mental health outcomes with objective, longitudinal data
Helping Medibio improve mental health outcomes with objective, longitudinal data
Expand mental health care beyond self-reported symptom management by creating technology that harnesses the first objective biomarker for depression, anxiety, and stress.
Medibio technology prevents needless suffering, leveraging physiological data to screen mental issues earlier and more objectively than before.
Next Mile helped Medibio successfully pivot its digital effort. Jump to the problem (mental health’s disorder), solution (road to recovery), or outcome (empowering others).
When a mental health problem grips you, its debilitating symptoms can manifest at any time or in any way. But when providing help, doctors can only measure a persistent affliction in brief visits using information you volunteer.
Similarly, care providers can only measure treatment effectiveness in snapshots which occur months or years apart. If you’re having an abnormally good day on your 6-month checkup, responding to your doctor’s question with an “okay” instead of a “bad” can unexpectedly alter your long-term prescription.
Outside of extreme cases, every mental health symptom used in a diagnosis is patient-reported. Until now, no objective biomarkers (a physical, measurable indicator of presence) existed for depression, anxiety, or stress. Medibio pioneered and proved the first method to objectively measure depression, anxiety, and stress using circadian heart rate data.
Given its huge potential, Medibio intended to implement their founding insight in a scalable way that combined multiple digital technologies:
With a good plan, Medibio set off.
Complexity is often necessary in digital, but unchecked complexity increases potential for scope creep. After months of heroic work, technical results just weren’t proportionate to the effort invested. Then, an abrupt executive departure brought progress to depressing, anxiety-inducing, stressful halt.
Medibio needed a reboot. It’s happened to all of us who’ve done digital. Given what they had and where they were, how could they move forward?
Medibio’s executive leadership needed to know the raw truth about their technology, roadmap, and team to manage an effective transition. To start, Next Mile assessed Medibio's technology portfolio against its business goals, evaluating their:
Then, we synthesized our findings objectively, delivering critical observations, analyses, and recommendations fearlessly and thoroughly. In particular, we emphasized five concrete, high-priority next actions that would focus attention and build positive momentum.
Intellectual property would prove crucial to Medibio’s success and deserved a deliberate and intentional strategy. While Medibio drove IP strategy, Next Mile ensured that chosen Medibio IP met critical value criteria and became difficult for competitors to buy their way into. Explicit strategy aligned the execution effort, making real traction attainable.
Product management is where strategy and execution intersect. Every product manager walks a tightrope, balancing the:
Next Mile focused the development of Medibio’s products and features toward Medibio’s strategic imperatives. Initially, we owned the day-to-day:
Our regular effort nailed down achievable, aligned releases, and set Medibio up to deliver repeatedly. Next Mile established a habit of delivery, a workflow and practice Medibio could and would adopt and own.
In digital, feeling off-track hurts, and correcting for it isn’t easy. However, in retrospect, it’s the vulnerable moments that become the most powerful.
The executive departure provided time to reflect on fundamental strategic alignment. If discipline is reminding yourself what you want, then every patient, clinical, and business stakeholder Next Mile interviewed wanted Medibio’s promise to be true—powerfully so. Medibio’s opportunity is important, unique, timely, and broadly applicable. Reconnecting with the core mission energized everybody.
Reestablishing progress meant that immediate next steps would set an important precedent: the pace. Regular, cadenced deliveries build trust, and trust tempers technology crises. Next Mile product management put delivery on a rhythm, reducing manic urgency while keeping true importance and priority in sight.
Medibio reoriented, moved forward confidently, and reacquired momentum quickly—all without forsaking prior efforts. Strategically, they aligned around technology, data science, and clinical treatment. Digitally, Medibio pivoted toward a flexible service model, then targeted the highest-impact area for mental health management: the workplace.
Medibio ilumen measures mental health outside the doctor’s office, where it really exists. Partnering with businesses enables much earlier screening, reducing the enormous lag between onset and diagnosis:
Fundamentally, ilumen empowers people.
Medibio technology takes aim at reducing incredibly prevalent mental health issues:
Now, couple that prevalence with this astonishing fact about diagnosis: the average gap between onset and treatment is 6–10 years, depending on the study.
Medibio technology is strengthening mental health support in workplaces already. ilumen provides data-driven feedback to help employees take an active role in their mental well-being. It equips workers and organizations with the tools to understand the difference between bad moods and potentially serious health threats.
Today, Medibio’s technical and research teams are refining and expanding their algorithm toolset and digital offering. Medibio has the digital processes in place to forge their own path.
Digital is typically business-critical, not patient-critical. It’s no exaggeration to say that Medibio digital health technology can improve the well-being of the entire world.