Commercial Feasibility of Digital Mental Health Service Recommendation & Payment Platform For Employers

Around 10% of the world's population suffers from mental illness or other behavioural health disorders. In the UK alone, over 10m people now have clinical-level depression and anxiety and have not yet sought care. Last year, 1.5mn people were referred to specialist MH services, provided by the NHS, down from 1.7mn the year before despite the COVID-19 pandemic triggering a 25% increase in the prevalence of anxiety and depression worldwide. The [Royal College of Psychatrists][0] also believes that there is a hidden waiting list of patients with 23% having to wait at least another 3 months after their first referral. Due to the overwhelming pressure on the NHS, there is a real risk of people's MH deteriorating as they are left with no support in between appointments.

Syndi is looking to support millions of people with MH issues through early intervention and personalised digital support. Through the use of the Syndi self-care navigation platform, we offer a clinically validated assessment process, and internally developed machine learning system that provides independently rated health service recommendations and then an individual or group dashboard that provides awareness of the progress being made against the previous assessment.

In order to continue the product and commercial development of Syndi, we are proposing to undertake a project to assess new business models and routes to market as well enabling our future commercialisation plans.

This project will be focused on evaluating the feasibility of SME customers to give them the means to better understand the MH situation within their company as well as subsidise the cost of MH services to help them improve their MH and reduce the risk of costly professional services later. We will do this through detailed commercial analysis and outreach as well as in-depth user experience discussions to ensure that the next evolution of our product is fit for the needs of this market segment.

Our overall aim of this project is to create new revenue streams for Syndi and to support the reduction of the estimated £56bn (Deloitte, 2022) lost by British businesses every year through lost productivity caused by MH issues.

[0]: https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/news-and-features/latest-news/detail/2020/10/06/two-fifths-of-patients-waiting-for-mental-health-treatment-forced-to-resort-to-emergency-or-crisis-services