Previously submitted to: JMIR Mental Health (no longer under consideration since Apr 11, 2023)
Date Submitted: Jul 4, 2022
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Top-Funded Companies Offering Digital Health Interventions for the Prevention and Treatment of Depression: A Systematic Market Analysis
ABSTRACT
Background:
Digital innovations in the mental health care field provide an opportunity to mitigate the global burden of mental disorders such as depression by facilitating timely, accessible, scalable, and affordable interventions. However, there is little evidence on how much these interventions rely on novel automated approaches, such as conversational agents (CAS), just-in-time adaptive interventions (JITAIs), or low-burden sensing technologies.
Objective:
Our objectives were: (i) to identify the top-funded companies offering digital health interventions for the prevention and treatment of depression (DHID), (ii) to review DHIDs’ scientific evidence, (iii) to identify which psychotherapy approaches are being used, and (iv) to examine the degree to which these DHIDs include novel automated approaches such as CAs, JITAIs, and low-burden sensing technologies.
Methods:
A systematic search was conducted using two venture capital databases (Crunchbase and Pitchbook) to identify the top 30 funded companies offering DHIDs. In addition, studies related to the DHIDs were identified via scientific databases (PubMed, Cochrane Library, and APA Psych-info) and hand-searching (companies’ websites).
Results:
The top-30 funded companies offering DHIDs received total funding of 2’592 billion USD up to February 2022. A total of 83 studies were identified by fewer than half of the companies (n=14; 46.6%), of which only 8 (n= 26.6%) employed a randomized controlled trial design. Cognitive-behavioural therapy is the most commonly used psychotherapy approach (n=25, 83.3%), whereas behavioural activation and/or interpersonal therapy (the most effective interventions for depression) were used by only 8 companies (26.6%). Regarding novel technologies, only a few companies incorporated the use of CAs (n=8, 26.6%), or low-burden sensing technologies such as biofeedback-based breathing training with heart rate measurements (n=3, 10%), and only one used a biomarker for depression based on voice features (3.33%).
Conclusions:
Findings suggest that the amount of funding is not related to the evidence. There is a strong variation in the quantity of evidence provided and an overall need for more rigorous effectiveness trials. Few DHIDs use automated approaches such as CAs and JITAIs, limiting their scalability and delivery of actionable support at the most opportune moments. Clinical Trial: N/A
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