Jun 18, 2019

California's tech-focused mental health experiment

California is partnering with Silicon Valley to work on smartphone apps that can help in the early stages of a mental health crisis, the New York Times reports.

The big picture: While mental health apps have flooded the market, there's been little research as to whether they work. California's partnership is aiming to fill that hole.

What's happening: State and county mental health officials have been meeting with two tech companies in California to test apps for people who receive care from the state's mental health system.

Yes, but: "At least for now, California's effort to jump-start medicine's digital future is running into some of the same issues that have dogged old-fashioned drug trials: recruiting problems, questions about informed consent, and the reality that, no matter the treatment, some people won’t 'tolerate' it well, and quit," NYT writes.

Go deeper: AI is helping researchers understand mental illness

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Pandemic forces startups to shift gears

Illustration: Eniola Odetunde/Axios

Spaces CEO Brad Herman had an early warning about COVID-19 because his startup supplies VR attractions to a number of theme parks in China. Realizing that the business he spent the last few years building was going to evaporate, Herman quickly found a new way to apply his team's know-how: helping companies host Zoom teleconferences in VR.

Why it matters: Many startups are rethinking the viability of their core businesses in the wake of the coronavirus. Spaces' move is one of many such pivots likely to crop up in the coming months.

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Why it matters: In the midst of a pandemic, scientists face dueling needs: to find treatments quickly and to ensure they are safe and effective. By using this new type of adaptive platform, doctors hope to collect clinical data that will help more quickly determine what actually works.

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We can't just flip the switch on the coronavirus

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It feels like some big, terrible switch got flipped when the coronavirus upended our lives — so it’s natural to want to simply flip it back. But that is not how the return to normalcy will go.

The big picture: Even as the number of illnesses and deaths in the U.S. start to fall, and we start to think about leaving the house again, the way forward will likely be slow and uneven. This may feel like it all happened suddenly, but it won't end that way.

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