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These Three Startup Health Entrepreneurs Are Working to Fight Addiction and End the Opioid Epidemic · StartUp Health NOW Podcast

• 0:07
  As doctors, we're very good at labeling people with a diagnosis and saying, "Hey, you are an addict. You have an alcohol problem. You're smoking. You've got diabetes. You're overweight."
• 0:16
  But then when it actually comes to delivering the end-to-end care to help them through those processes, you know, we don't do a very good job of it at all. [upbeat music] Welcome back to Startup Health Now.
• 0:32
  Each week on our show, we bring you interviews with the entrepreneurs and innovators reimagining the future of health. I'm Logan Plaster. This episode is part of our monthly Health Moonshot series.
• 0:41
  Each month, we take one of Startup Health's 12 audacious health goals and highlight founders working to make the impossible a reality. This month, we're talking about the moonshot to end addiction and the opioid crisis.
• 0:53
  I'm joined in the virtual studio by my colleague, India Edwards, and we're gonna introduce you to three companies working to fight addiction and bring an end to the opioid epidemic. Great to have you, India.
• 1:04
  Thanks for having me. Logan, I'm really excited to talk about these companies and what they've built. Let's start with New Life. What have they created? So let me tell you about J.D.
• 1:13
  Mintz, the CEO and founder of New Life Virtual, which Startup Health backed just this year. So before he started New Life, J.D. had been an entrepreneur in tech for more than 20 years.
• 1:25
  He'd worked in real estate and then in the e-commerce sector. He was a success, at least financially, uh, and that success led to a, a lifestyle of drinking and heavy drug use.
• 1:36
  For years, he kept it together, partying hard, feeding his addiction, then recovering enough to operate his business and keep his family intact. But in 2012, the walls began to crumble around him.
• 1:48
  First, he was kicked out of his own business. Then, after a particularly hard night, his wife confronted him with an ultimatum. He had to get sober or get out of the house.
• 1:58
  That night, he drove around their California neighborhood, uh, trying to decide what to do next. For a week, he drove around town to different Alcoholics Anonymous meetings but couldn't get up the nerve to walk inside.
• 2:10
  Then he'd go home, and he would have to actually lie to his wife that he'd been to the meeting. A week later, he found his way finally into an AA meeting, and he never looked back.
• 2:20
  Eventually, he wanted to share that healing experience with others, so he opened his own brick-and-mortar rehab clinic in California.
• 2:27
  That's when the bigger challenges of addiction at a population health level and the critical gaps in our system became more evident to J.D. Here he is at a recent Health Transformer showcase.
• 2:38
  Did you know that 93,000 people died from an overdose in 2020? That's one human life every seven minutes. This is what we help solve. Outside of the pandemic, it is the leading cause of accidental death in America.
• 2:52
  It's very personal to me. I almost died because the current treatment model didn't work for me, which is why I opened up treatment centers in 2014, realized what worked and what didn't, and set out to solve the problem.
• 3:03
  It's because the current treatment model doesn't work, and it isn't scalable. People don't know where to turn.
• 3:08
  Care is fragmented and transactional, which is why only 10% of those needing help get help, leaving 90% to suffer needlessly. To address these challenges, J.D.
• 3:18
  built New Life Virtual, a behavioral health platform that extends the benefits of a close-knit rehab or a close-knit post-rehab sort of situation into the home through your mobile device.
• 3:30
  Rehab clinics and therapists can use New Life as, like, a practice platform. It can handle scheduling, privacy forms, assessment forms, and telemedicine visits. Comes with a built-in library of educational content.
• 3:43
  Uh, J.D. calls this a click and mortar model and says it helps therapists to improve the continuity of care as clients transition from rehab into their normal lives.
• 3:53
  Those touchpoints not only improve the likelihood of treatment success, but they improve the practice's bottom line as telemedicine reimbursement continues to expand.
• 4:02
  New Life blends traditional treatment models with personalized prescriptions to on-demand content, communities, support groups, and peers.
• 4:10
  We keep people engaged between their sessions, providing better insights to their home and life.
• 4:15
  This enables providers to build relationships and trust while better monitoring and improving their clients' social determinants of health.
• 4:23
  Our app allows anyone affected by addiction to connect around and above the disease.
• 4:29
  Whether they're curious, in active addiction, in active recovery, or a loved one, our workflows allow them to engage in treatment services at every level while seamlessly maintaining long-term connections with always-on support.
• 4:41
  With New Life, long-term recovery has never been more attainable.
• 4:45
  One way to think about it is that for people recovering from addiction, the New Life platform integrates rehab therapy into their everyday life, extending it beyond the walls of a clinic or an AA meeting.
• 4:56
  It accomplishes that by cultivating a new kind of social network.
• 5:01
  Instead of projecting a picture perfect version of ourselves in a Facebook group or on Instagram, the New Life social community creates a space for people to get real about their challenges.
• 5:11
  At the same time, we're each more than our struggles, of course, so New Life aims to provide tools that are person-centered, not necessarily treatment-centered, and helps people come together around hobbies and passions as well.
• 5:24
  For instance, you may want support about your recovery from alcohol abuse, but you may also love baseball or knitting or entrepreneurship, and you may be more likely to stick to your recovery plan when surrounded by people who get you, who really understand your, uh, hopes and dreams.
• 5:40
  And it turns out there are quite a few people in the world who might need this kind of community. The substance use disorder market is growing rapidly.
• 5:47
  There are 16,000 facilities and 500,000 providers that are tapped out serving 10% of the potential $300 billion market. More people need help.
• 5:57
  Less people are there to provide help, and we amplify the amount of people existing providers can see and the speed at which services can be delivered.India, I love what JD Mintz is doing at New Life for a number of reasons.
• 6:10
  He's building off of personal experience, which gives him the passion and drive to persist when things get tough.
• 6:16
  He's also turning social media on its head, introducing the idea of a supportive social network that really understands that you have weaknesses. Absolutely.
• 6:25
  I, I truly, truly admire everything that JD and his team have built.
• 6:31
  I know immediate family, um, of mine who struggle with alcohol and substance abuse and are really trying to get help, and I know they would appreciate a platform just like this.
• 6:47
  [upbeat music] Okay, India, let's get to our next founder. You talked to Yusuf Shirwani from Quit Genius, I understand. What are they working on? So I, I'm so excited to talk about Quit Genius.
• 7:01
  I recently caught up with Yusuf, the CEO and co-founder, to get an update on where they're currently at and what they're working on.
• 7:07
  To sort of sum it all up, Yusuf and his co-founders are updating addiction treatment for people using evidence-based therapy.
• 7:14
  What this means is that Quit Genius is replacing the legacy telephone coaching programs with a personalized technology-enabled digital clinic that is designed to help members access care wherever they are.
• 7:26
  Now, before we get into the nitty-gritty of this, I want to provide just a few key stats that I found on addiction trends in twenty twenty-one alone.
• 7:33
  According to the Edge Treatment Center in Orange County, twenty-two million people suffer from active substance use disorders. Twenty-three million people are currently in addiction recovery.
• 7:44
  Forty-five million people are directly impacted by addiction, and one in three households suffer from, are exposed to, or are otherwise impacted by addiction.
• 7:53
  So this is obviously a very massive ongoing challenge for millions of people and has been for a very long time. That is the primary reason why Yusuf decided to pursue addiction treatment.
• 8:05
  That was really the result of our own experience on the front line, just I guess, like, s-seeing how challenging it was for our patients to kind of overcome some of the most, like, challenging situations of their lives, really, um, and these highly stigmatized issues like, uh, substance use disorder and mental health.
• 8:22
  Um, and you know, what we started to realize is that as doctors, we're very good at labeling people with a diagnosis and saying, "Hey, you are an addict. You have an alcohol problem. You're smoking. You've got diabetes.
• 8:32
  You're overweight." But then when it actually comes to delivering the end-to-end care to help them through those processes, you know, we don't do a very good job of it at all.
• 8:39
  And you're taught this version of healthcare in medical school that you should be very holistic. You should think about their environment. You should really try to support them in their personal lives.
• 8:46
  And then the reality of it is we do none of that because it's all too difficult to actually deliver. And that's what sort of felt like from a technology perspective we could do a much better job of.
• 8:55
  Um, so really delivering kind of end-to-end, you know, chronic condition management for highly stigmatized conditions such as an addiction. Um, and that sort of led to Quit Genius.
• 9:05
  Logan, the real challenge with addiction isn't the toxin itself. It's kicking the habit once you've been hooked.
• 9:11
  Addiction treatment programs have been around for decades, but for smokers, for example, even though around seventy percent of them want to quit, only three percent are successful.
• 9:20
  People who desperately wanna quit find themselves sliding back into an addiction they know could kill them. These days, nearly two years into a global pandemic, that threat is even more urgent than normal.
• 9:31
  Smokers are one point four times more likely to have severe COVID symptoms and two point four times more likely to be admitted to the ICU or die due to COVID.
• 9:40
  Smokers are incentivized to quit because they know the nicotine is killing them.
• 9:44
  Employers and insurers are incentivized to help them quit because smokers cost them billions in added healthcare costs every single year, and yet smoking cessation programs fail.
• 9:54
  And according to Yusuf, it's because our methods are severely outdated, so he decided to take matters into his own hands.
• 10:00
  Yeah, so at the core of what we wanted to do was take the time-tested therapies like cognitive behavioral therapy and medication-assisted treatment and really from a first principle's perspective rethink what would that look like if it was reinvented today in the twenty-first century.
• 10:15
  And the reality is you probably won't be driving across town.
• 10:18
  You're f-first of all, you know, waiting four to six weeks for an appointment, then driving across town, taking time off work, you know, having to figure out your family and social situation, uh, to sit in a doctor's office, have a chat, and then, you know, go back home at the end of it.
• 10:31
  Um, and all these things, particularly for people who are very at risk, just add to the o-o-obstacles, really, and that's why today, you know, of people with a substance use disorder diagnosis, only eight percent ever get treatment, and ninety-two percent just don't get access to care.
• 10:44
  So we wanted to really rethink all of that from scratch.
• 10:48
  Um, and our approach was really just, um, you know, to take those therapies but then take a whole person approach that for the first time can really simplify a lot of the complexity of addiction care and let individuals access it on their own terms.
• 10:59
  So what that means today is we have a digital health program that can be accessed one hundred percent virtually, and with that program, it's a combination of human clinical care, so you get access to your own care team.
• 11:09
  So we have our own network, you know, across the US of, of prescribers, including physicians and nurse practitioners in conjunction with licensed drug and alcohol counselors who help with the psychological side of things.
• 11:19
  We have a lot we do on the awareness and engagement side to really help employers and health plan recognize that this is a very big problem in their population.
• 11:26
  We do a lot of proactive marketing that's around destigmatizing addiction and reinforcing the, you know, confidentiality and anonymity in accessing treatment, and then we can also take data-driven approaches of ingesting claims data from, you know, health plan and the pharmacy, um, and using that to identify people.
• 11:41
  And when we identify those people, we really create a care plan to understand, okay, well, what is the right treatment for you, not a cookie cutter approach that can fit everybody.
• 11:50
  Um, and that's where the component of, you know, human clinical care, uh, with your own clinical team in conjunction with digital CBT, access to connected devices that enable remote monitoring, so we can see whether or not somebody's actually improving using biochem, um, you know, biochemical and biometric tests.
• 12:05
  Um, and then we even do end-to-end medication fulfillment, so we'll prescribe the medication, but we will then fulfill it to the individual's home to help improve the, you know, the seamless experience that they have.
• 12:14
  And the final component is group therapy.
• 12:16
  But none of that necessarily needs an in-person component.You can maybe go to a local group support or, um, you know, access treatment in person as well, but that can actually all be delivered very effectively remotely.
• 12:28
  Um, and that's actually how you start to really solve the access issue.
• 12:31
  It's by allowing people to access care in a stigma-free environment on their own terms, because there's a whole cohort of the population that, um, you know, if you told them to go to rehab, they just wouldn't listen to you because there's a lot of stigma associated with that.
• 12:43
  So it's really tackling that issue. Like Yusuf mentioned, it's a combination of human and programmatic support.
• 12:49
  The Quit Genius mobile app gives each participant access to a routine quit coach who will work with them to set goals and build a personalized cognitive behavioral therapy program to recovery made just for them.
• 13:00
  On the programmatic side, Quit Genius delivers a library of evidence-based educational resources and tracking capabilities in order to monitor progress.
• 13:09
  Now, Yusuf and his team are based in London and have just completed a massive sixty-four million dollar funding round in order to scale and expand Quit Genius into the United States. Here's Yusuf explaining their plans.
• 13:21
  We really see addiction as being an unsolved problem, and, you know, the metrics certainly indicate that, um, you know, particularly how they've panned out over the course of the pandemic as well.
• 13:31
  So it's been described as, you know, the epidemic within the pandemic. So there's really a need to change. And I think this round really shows that there's real value that, um, can be created by solving this problem.
• 13:42
  So, you know, we very much think of ourselves as a mission-driven organization.
• 13:47
  If, if we're successful financially, that means we've affected a lot of people in a very positive direction because of, you know, the safeguards we have in our culture and our business model that mean that we can have a broad impact to a lot of people.
• 13:58
  It really comes down to just being able to scale and meet the demand. So I think the challenge is less, is, is this a real problem, um, and more can we scale our model across all fifty states?
• 14:08
  We need to continue to really exponentially grow our provider network over time. We need to ensure that we can continue to invest in the clinical research, um, and, you know, back end operations to support that growth.
• 14:18
  So it's really going to be focused on that, um, just ensuring that we can meet the national scale that we're starting to see. So Logan, this is a lot more than just kicking a habit.
• 14:27
  It's about bringing hope and happiness to people's lives.
• 14:30
  It's been shown that the daily stressors of addiction, whether it's smoking or alcohol or an addiction to social media, anything, contribute significantly to decreased happiness and increased depression, which leads to a variety of other problems and challenges.
• 14:43
  Addiction doesn't exist in a silo, but it affects every single aspect of a person's life.
• 14:48
  And a modern approach to addiction treatment like Quit Genius can truly crack the code on habit change and help individuals recover completely.
• 14:55
  India, it is phenomenal that they just raised that sixty-four million dollar raise. It, it really, uh, sets a new bar for where we're putting our investment dollars and how seriously we're taking, um, addiction.
• 15:08
  I mean, smoking cessation has been something in the past that we've just accepted failure at, you know, and, and this modern approach says, you know, no more, uh, we're actually gonna help people, you know, live healthy lives.
• 15:22
  And it's incredible. [instrumental music] So I've talked about Quit Genius. Now I'm excited to hear about Wellbrain. Logan, what are they building?
• 15:34
  India, let me introduce you to Sumeet Maniar, the CEO of Wellbrain, a company that Startup Health backed in twenty nineteen.
• 15:41
  At a high level, and why I wanted to cover them on this episode, uh, Maniar and his Wellbrain team are addressing how a crisis in chronic pain is compounding the opioid crisis.
• 15:52
  Let me just take a minute to appreciate how big of a problem chronic pain is. Uh, it's a bit of a vague category, but it's defined medically as three months or more of pain.
• 16:02
  India, I personally recently had a week of back pain, and I had trouble sleeping. I had trouble working. It was hard for me to play with my kids. It was awful, and it was just a week.
• 16:12
  And more than a hundred million adults in the US alone report dealing with chronic pain for three months or more at a time.
• 16:19
  According to Maniar, uh, who presented at a recent Health Transformer showcase, a, a significant percentage, tens of millions of people who suffer from chronic pain also have an underlying mental health or behavioral health condition.
• 16:33
  And that is where Wellbrain comes in, connecting the dots between mental health conditions, chronic pain, and ultimately the opioid overuse that can stem from chronic pain.
• 16:44
  In this arena of health, everything is connected.
• 16:47
  If we really get to the root of chronic pain and where it overlaps with mental health, we can not only reduce opioid use, but we can also save massive amounts of healthcare dollars.
• 16:57
  Here's Maniar explaining the platform on the showcase.
• 17:00
  We are a digital health chronic pain and behavioral health integration platform where we enable providers and healthcare systems and other entities to choose from an array of evidence-based non-opiate modalities to treat chronic pain, fight the opiate epidemic, and help save lives.
• 17:20
  Specifically, we're an iPad app in the clinical situation. We're also telehealth enabled through the web.
• 17:26
  And then we have a smartphone solution where based on outcomes, physicians provide customized results to the patients or customized prescriptions of our solutions to our patients, and then the physicians can track these activities accordingly.
• 17:40
  So essentially, this is an end-to-end behavioral health solution that provides a dashboard for clinicians, virtual psych testing, patient engagement tools, and an app and a platform for tracking biofeedback.
• 17:52
  One thing that's unique about Wellbrain is that it started with a specialization in mindfulness and meditation and understanding how big an impact those practices could have on our mental health and resiliency.
• 18:04
  But as they've developed, they've expanded the platform to include everything from telepsych to neuromodulation to physical therapy.
• 18:12
  The bottom line, India, is that they figured out that addressing mental health and chronic pain and reducing opioid use, it, it had to have an all of the above integrated approach.There's no one size fit all, and this is driven by our physician, uh, focused, uh, input and what the patients want.
• 18:29
  So we're a true platform play here.
• 18:32
  Just to get into the business a little bit, in the past, Wellbrain has worked in a sort of fee for service model where clinicians simply paid for the ability to use the platform on a per patient basis.
• 18:43
  But what's exciting is that Wellbrain is seeing success with insurers using a value based model where the idea is that the platform can help the whole system save money and improve outcomes, creating a, uh, a win win.
• 18:57
  Over the course of two separate three thousand patient studies, Wellbrain has shown an eighteen percent reduction in ER visits.
• 19:04
  Extrapolating that research out to the US population, uh, they estimate a fifteen billion dollar, uh, savings potential, a thirty one percent reduction in overall pain, and twenty seven million fewer opiate prescriptions.
• 19:17
  We saw clinical reductions in opiate prescriptions, emergency room visits, and then the subjective pain scores.
• 19:24
  So the patient improvement has increased, and if you extrapolate it out to various, uh, US statistics, these are significant impacts. The bottom line here is that this is a massive market and huge area for impact.
• 19:36
  Munir and his team have put in years doing clinical research to connect the dots between mindfulness, behavioral health solutions, chronic pain, and opioid use disorder.
• 19:46
  They're deeply tied in with physician groups, particularly pain clinics, who work with them on honing the product.
• 19:52
  We were co founded by three practicing pain physicians, so we technically have three chief medical officers.
• 19:58
  And then collectively we have access to about thirty to forty thousand of their patients as a living laboratory. And then I myself have, uh, founded several other startups, some with exits.
• 20:08
  And then the rest of the team has significant, uh, health and or digital health experience, uh, so significant maybe seventy to a hundred years' worth of experience.
• 20:17
  He, he said seventy to a hundred years of collective experience in the space.
• 20:21
  And his proximity to pain physicians gives him what he calls a living laboratory for rapid iteration, which is what you need to create products that really move the needle on mental health and don't just fulfill a business case.
• 20:33
  These folks are certainly ones to watch in the coming year as they take an all of the above approach to fighting the opioid epidemic, and they're just scratching the surface on what's possible.
• 20:43
  [upbeat music] India, that's the time we have for this month. Thank you so much for joining me. We'll be back next week with more stories of healthcare innovation and inspiration.
• 20:52
  And next month, India and I will be back in the virtual studio for a deep dive on founders in our children's health moonshot. See you then. Thanks for listening to Startup Health Now.
• 21:05
  Startup Health invests in health transformers from around the world who are committed to achieving audacious health moonshots.
• 21:11
  If you wanna learn how you can join this community of entrepreneurs or if you wanna connect with one of our three hundred and fifty companies, go to startuphealth.com.
• 21:18
  If you'd like to learn how you can invest in our health moonshot rolling fund in collaboration with AngelList, go to healthmoonshots.com. Thanks for listening to Startup Health Now. We'll be back next week.
• 21:30
  [upbeat music]