How Digital Interventions Transform Mental Health

What if the tools patients use between therapy sessions mattered more than the sessions themselves?

In this clip from our episode “Fixing the Access Crisis In Mental Health”, host John Driscoll and Mark Frank, Co-Founder and CEO of SonderMind, break down how a fully integrated platform combining 80 digital interventions with an AI coach is producing outcomes up to 275% better than traditional therapy alone.

Listen to the full episode here

🎙️⚕️ABOUT MARK FRANK
As the CEO and co-founder of SonderMind, I lead a fast-growing and compassionate team whose mission is to redesign behavioral health to increase access, expand utilization and improve clinical outcomes. Our focus is to democratize behavioral healthcare for both patients and practitioners, by making it easy to access therapists with the right expertise, making it convenient by offering online or in person treatment, and making it affordable by matching patients with highly qualified providers that deliver the most effective care. I believe in leading with transparency, empathy, and courage, and my passion is to build an organization that has a positive and transformative effect on the field of behavioral health and ultimately the entire healthcare ecosystem.

Prior to founding SonderMind in 2015, I helped found three other successful ventures, including Next Oncology, TermScout and SafeImageMD. Prior to my career as an entrepreneur, I worked in healthcare investment banking at Morgan Stanley, as well as time with Lehman Brothers and CDI Global. Prior to my business career, I served as an officer in the US Army. During and after that time in the military, I saw friends and colleagues return from deployments and struggle to access appropriate mental health care. This experience shaped and strengthened my commitment to enhancing access to therapy to improve and enrich people’s lives.

I have a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science from the United States Military Academy at West Point, a Masters in Computer Information Systems from the University of Phoenix, a Masters of Engineering Management from Northwestern University, and an MBA in Finance and Operations from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

🎙️⚕️ABOUT CARETALK
CareTalk is a weekly podcast that provides an incisive, no B.S. view of the US healthcare industry. Join co-hosts John Driscoll (President U.S. Healthcare and EVP, Walgreens Boots Alliance) and David Williams (President, Health Business Group) as they debate the latest in US healthcare news, business and policy. 

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Transcript

Mark: 0:07

100%. And where we are part of the team as well. Because that time between that second session and the third session is actually where the work happens, right? It's not really in the session. Yeah, there's work that happens in the session, but the real work

John: 0:22

happens outside of it. And, and, and

Mark: 0:22

do

John: 0:23

you… I mean, this is an area where everybody talks about need, but very few people talk about outcomes. Do you have any suggestion that, that your, your a- your approach, your integrated approach is actually more effective than anyone else's?

Mark: 0:37

It's incredibly more effective. And so when you look at, when, when we look at the data, what we see is that for one… I mean, we, we did a s- we did a peer review journal article about five years ago that was just looking at measurement-based care. Now, everybody knows when you use measurement-based care, the outcomes are better in any setting in healthcare, right? Meaning when, when, when you, when you see what's actually happening, and then you feed that information back to the, to the doctor, to the provider, oh wow, it actually helps them, you know, ma- ma- overall make the care better for the patient. So we did a study with the University of Denver, had that published, and what we found was meaningfully higher outcomes for our providers who were using our measurement-based care tools. Fast-forward to today, where we have a fully integrated platform for the provider, but also for the patient, right? Where the c- where you can download today the Sondia Mind app, and you can use any one of 80 different interventions that are digitally enabled interventions. So think digital CBT, meditation, cognition improvement, memory games, things like that for, for senior… Like, all kinds of, all kinds of tools. And, uh, obviously an AI coach that allows you to inter- interface, goal setting, AI journaling, all of that, right? When you use those things, and when the provider is engaged in, in, in, uh, the utilization of those tools- We're seeing on upwards of 200 to 70, two, 225 to 275% improvement versus those, those clients and providers who don't use them. And that's a, this is a unique set- That's stunning … of tools that we've, we've, we've, we've created. And so we, it's, to us, it's this continuous care journey. It's this, this, this opportunity to say improving behavioral health is not this episodic, you just go in and you treat it. You, it has to be there throughout sort of the, y- your life. That doesn't mean you should be in therapy, by the way, for perpetuity. In fact, if you are- Maybe some

John: 2:33

of us need to be … something's

Mark: 2:34

wrong. Well, I would argue unless you have a serious mental illness that, you know, schizophrenia, bipolar, cer- certain things that really do need constant, uh, care and attention, we, we, we sh- we should… It, it, it probably means if you're, if you don't have- So it's

John: 2:51

possible, it's your… Which, I think what you're suggesting, Mark, is it's possible for folks with pain and challenge to actually find solutions.

Mark: 2:59

You have, you, there, it's 100% possible to find solutions. And if you look at it like, "Hey, I'm gonna deal with this episode. I'm gonna improve this, this component of, of my life or of my mental state, and I'm gonna work on that." And then you say, "Okay, let me work on that. Let me solve it," and then you move on to the next thing. Yeah, maybe you could do those in a continuous setting, meaning, meaning you could just be in therapy for years and years and years. But the reality is you're probably better off actually letting some of those new behaviors set before you try to tackle a whole set of new behaviors that you want to, to implement into your life.

John: 3:33

Maybe, maybe let's leave it there, Mark. You've, you've given us a lot of hope, b- I think for, for therapists and practitioners who, who don't have a platform, for patients that are looking for access, and that the fact that some of these tools and platforms, and perhaps the one at Sondermind first can actually create real solutions for a lot of folks, and one of the biggest unmet needs in American healthcare.