Empowering mental wellness with digital screening
Helping Medibio improve mental health outcomes with objective, longitudinal data
The challenge
Expand mental health care beyond self-reported symptom management by creating technology that harnesses the first objective biomarker for depression, anxiety, and stress.
The outcome
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).
Mental health’s disorder
Feeling blue
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.
Medibio’s breakthrough
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.
Expand reach, expand relief
Given its huge potential, Medibio intended to implement their founding insight in a scalable way that combined multiple digital technologies:
- >Screening questionnaire data captured by local, web, or mobile applications.
- >Circadian heart rate data acquired from medical equipment and wearables.
- >Algorithmic evaluation done at the backend as a service.
- >Results returned in multiple formats through multiple APIs.
With a good plan, Medibio set off.
Encounter complexity
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?
The road to recovery
Assessment and transition management
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:
- >Product roadmap
- >System architecture
- >Code
- >Capabilities
- >Customer sentiment
- >Assets and IP plan
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.
IP planning focuses delivery
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 makes delivery habitual
Product management is where strategy and execution intersect. Every product manager walks a tightrope, balancing the:
- 1.Engineering pressures of delivering a world-class technology product.
- 2.Business constraints of limited resources.
- 3.Market realities of making something worth buying.
- 4.Changing audiences and needs as the offering grows.
Next Mile focused the development of Medibio’s products and features toward Medibio’s strategic imperatives. Initially, we owned the day-to-day:
- >Feature definition
- >Feature alignment against business (revenue/IP/regulatory), customer, and user needs
- >Identification of build vs. buy/integrate
- >Technical option selection and evaluation
- >Roadmap and prioritization
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.
Strength of heart
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 interval
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.
The rhythm
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.
Solution specifics
Empowering others
Meaningful action
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.
Tools for health
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:
- >Patients get early detection, tools to mitigate, and access to information and help.
- >Doctors get objective, clinically-actionable data that aids in next steps.
- >Patients, workplaces, and care systems save in healthcare costs.
Fundamentally, ilumen empowers people.
Mental health impacts
Medibio technology takes aim at reducing incredibly prevalent mental health issues:
- >Depression: In 2017 (pre-pandemic!), an estimated 11 million U.S. adults had at least one major depressive episode with severe impairment.
- >Anxiety: An estimated 19.1% of U.S. adults had any anxiety disorder in the past year.
- >Stress: Work-related stress causes 120,000 deaths and results in $190 billion in healthcare costs yearly.
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.
Digital well-being
Science, not stigma
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.
What’s next for Medibio?
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.