Digital therapeutics for adolescent mental health

Wellth’s smartphone-based Medication Adherence Rewards Program motivates and empowers individuals diagnosed with chronic behavioral health conditions to engage in the daily healthy behaviors that generate actual clinical outcomes. Using a repetitive trigger-behavior-reward interface, Wellth develops a long term habit of self-management and has shown the ability to improve outcomes for our partners including ED utilization, readmissions, and metrics like A1c control for Diabetics. ​ Wellth’s solution is offered to high-acuity health system patients through an intuitive smartphone app that includes daily personalized nudges as well as quick photo ‘check-ins’ for daily medications. Patients enrolled into the program are endowed a $30 reward balance on the first day of each month, but must consistently upload their medication photos each day to earn the full reward. Deductions of $2 per day are made for missed photo uploads (until a minimum balance of $0). Our Wellth Member Educator team regularly monitors enrolled member behaviors, outreaches to members flagged as nonadherent, and initiates motivational interviewing discussions with nonadherent members if appropriate. The Member Educators also communicate regularly with health system care managers to report on patient adherence behaviors.

Wellth is a behavioral economics company focused on helping patients with chronic behavioral and physical health conditions improve the daily behaviors that actually determine outcomes. Wellth is the only digital intervention in the market that gives the necessary daily financial incentives to overcome patients’ Present Bias, which means that human behaviors are motivated by immediate and tangible benefits, not what we rationally know is good for us in the long term. Wellth’s smartphone-based Medication Adherence Rewards Program has consistently produced adherence rates of 85-90%+ even in behavioral health populations diagnosed with serious mental illness, heavily impacted by substance use disorders, and comorbid with physical health diagnoses.

SparkRx is the first digital therapeutic for adolescents (13-22) with symptoms of depression.

Health systems and providers give great care within the provider setting but lack the ability and resources to motivate and engage with and serve their patients at home. They must fully rely on their patients to not only pick up their prescriptions but actually adhere to their treatment plan at the right time every single day. Health systems largely do not have the expertise or capabilities to drive real behavior change in the most complex populations that have a history of being unresponsive to standard care management protocols. Although some providers may have implemented digital or remote solutions to improve adherence, they are limited by the large number of patients who eventually stop engaging with those devices. Finally, health systems may not have adequate resources or integration capabilities to support additional care management workflows. Wellth has the expertise to implement the optimal incentive design to motivate the highest acuity portion of a health system’s population, which has historically been unresponsive to all other self-management and adherence initiatives. Our solution streamlines disparate health system care management efforts by improving adherence to behavioral health, physical health, and SUD care plans at the same time. Our daily adherence insights extend much farther than the limited pharmacy claims data that health systems currently use to triage their patients, and we have the resources within our Wellth Member Educator team to act on those insights immediately and outreach to nonadherent members.

Wellth’s key differentiator from all other adherence-focused vendors is that it applies the most appropriate strategies from behavioral economics, choice architecture, and habit science at every patient touchpoint, to maximize engagement and behavior change. For instance, Wellth successfully increased enrollment rates by endowing members with a financial rewards balance upon enrollment; this is explained by a behavioral economics concept known as the ‘endowment effect’. Furthermore, one of the optimal incentive designs within the Wellth program is to require members to consistently demonstrate adherence each day to avoid deductions from their endowed balance; this concept is defined as ‘loss aversion’ and has been proven to be highly effective in incentivizing behavior compared to gain or lottery incentives in certain situations. Wellth has also carefully designed daily medication check-ins to ensure an enjoyable process for the patient that takes less than 2 seconds. Compare this to other solutions which require patients to show themselves swallowing each pill individually, in a time-intensive, unenjoyable interaction that provides no reward for doing so.