Q&A: A Conversation With NeuroFlow About Smart Health Certification

Founded in 2016 in Philadelphia, Pa., NeuroFlow is poised to make a big impact on healthcare. The company acquired its first paying client during the beta-testing phase of its product in August 2017, and raised $1.25 million in institutional capital by October. It launched its first commercial, fully-operational product in March 2018, joined the Smart Health Certification Program in June, and reached 100 paying clients in four countries shortly thereafter. NeuroFlow has won a variety of awards, including Psych Congress’ Best New Technology 2018, Philadelphia magazine’s 10 Startups to Watch 2018, Technical.ly Philly’s realLIST 2018 of top start-ups, and MedTech Boston’s top 5 mental health technology companies.

NeuroFlow’s HIPAA-compliant, cloud-based software platforms empower healthcare providers to objectively assess, track, and engage patients using evidence-based practices to support their mental health remotely, throughout all of therapy, not just during clinical visits; the platforms also empower patients to be accountable for their improvement and engagement in the therapy process, which is paramount for successful outcomes. Their suite of tools enables remote monitoring and behavioral health integration across the continuum of care, including psychology, primary care, and pain management settings. EngageBH assists behavioral health specialists in enhancing evidence-based therapies, improving engagement and compliance with therapy assignments; and IntegrateHealth seamlessly integrates behavioral health assessments and tracking into primary care and pain management settings. Combined, NeuroFlow’s platforms not only help clinicians and providers save costs, but also — more importantly — they help patients feel better.

We are proud to have NeuroFlow as a member of our inaugural class in the Smart Health Certification Program. We see broad potential applications for their technology, and we’re helping them build a blueprint for integrating into health systems to gain enterprise-level customers. We’re also facilitating critical conversations around insurance reimbursement that could offer NeuroFlow a major advantage in the future.

We recently sat down with Adam Pardes, COO of NeuroFlow to discuss their involvement in the Lab.

What is NeuroFlow’s core mission?

Healthcare providers are our heroes. They’re responsible for helping those who need it most, which can be a tough challenge when patients struggle with mental health conditions, often resulting in poor engagement, motivation, and treatment compliance.

NeuroFlow’s mission is to be a resource and asset to healthcare providers in their tireless pursuit to help patients feel better faster.

Why did your company choose to participate in the Smart Health Certification Program?

The program set us on a collision course with two vital aspects of the healthcare ecosystem: payors and providers. The Smart Health Innovation Lab is a collaborative environment where our technology has been able to make an immediate impact. We felt we had scaled our technology to be effective in a large-scale healthcare provider, and here we are today, in over 100 clinics and hospitals with thousands of patients using the platform.

What have you gained so far from working with the Innovation Lab?

This has been an invaluable experience for all of us working at NeuroFlow. To be able to tinker and tailor our product with real-time feedback from clinical professionals has given us the greenlight on future opportunities at major healthcare providers. We knew our product was capable of supporting clinical decision making, but this has been further validation, and more importantly, evidence that it could work in large health systems. We have been given several pathways to success, with doors opened by members of the Smart Health Innovation Lab ecosystem.

How do you think this program will impact your company’s roadmap? What do you hope to gain after graduation?

NeuroFlow grew 183% in the two quarters preceding the program. During the summer months, in the midst of the program, the company experienced 700% growth and has several more large hospital systems inquiring about using NeuroFlow’s unique and powerful tools with their providers and their patients. The program helped validate our product’s usability at scale in a large health system, and has thus accelerated our company’s growth and expansion. We will be making several key hires on the product side before the end of 2018. By adding new features and making it interoperable with major EHRs, we’re poised to make an even bigger impact with more patients and providers at large systems like Penn Medicine Lancaster General Hospital.

What makes our program unique?

The physical lab environment created is truly comprehensive — from the workstations to the product demo rooms built to replicate a hospital or clinical therapy setting. We have not seen anything like it, and it has been an opportunity to debut our software across the healthcare spectrum with leading experts in each discipline serving as a focus group. It has been a great second office to call a home away from our home in Center City Philadelphia.

How do you hope to change healthcare for the better? Do you think the Innovation Lab can help other companies make a positive change in healthcare?

Far too many people struggle with depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Millions of Americans are diagnosed but never seek treatment, or do so but find it to be ineffective. The good news is that there are evidence based therapies, such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), that are proven to work and be effective — there’s hope. These do not have to be chronic conditions. The challenge is that they work predicated on the patient’s engagement, compliance, and willingness to be an owner of the process. We believe NeuroFlow can help this and integrate behavioral health into the primary healthcare conversation.

With the resources, expertise, and access available as virtue of the Smart Health Innovation Lab, the program has helped prove that new, innovative technologies can deliver value to large health systems. We wholeheartedly recommend the program to other healthcare technology start-ups at similar stages of growth. It will serve as a learning experience and creative environment to try new things and to scale your ability to meet your company’s mission.