Reena Jadhav interviews Stephanie Tilenius at SplashX Invent Health Behavioral and mental health conference at HP

Reena Jadhav interviews Stephanie Tilenius (Entrepreneur, Board Director, Investor, Vida Health) at SplashX Invent Health Behavioral and mental health at HP

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TRANSCRIPT:

This is auto-generated and may have mistakes. Please listen to the interview for accuracy.

[00:01] REENA JADHAV: Hey everyone its Reena Jadhav out of health boot camp here at HP for Splash Invent X and I have got with me an amazing goddess investor who used to be an investor entrepreneur and now is a CEO of Vida. Welcome Stephanie.

[00:15] STEPHANIE: Thank you. Good to be here at SplashX.

[00:21] REENA JADHAV: Yes, we just had a panel discussion with some other great folks on there, just for those who could not attend. What is the biggest insight that you walking away with from that panel?

[00:31] STEPHANIE: Mental health is a big problem in our country. One in 4 people have a mental health condition. It is costing the system its about $280 million in 2020 and there is access, stigma and just a whole set of issues that we are discussing and one of the things we are solving at Vida it is providing access to cognitive individual therapy and therapists inside the app store medicine, we are told and players and pairs a lot of people now are onto the fact that people have gone morbid, mental and physical conditions and its driving huge amounts of costs in the system and impacting full prone activity so there’s the world trend around this.

[01:15] REENA JADHAV: And I think I heard hope, that I think we are attacking it all, I think conditionally mental health has been stigmatized as something you know, ‘your mental’, and it has been more about the anti-depressants, putting you on hardcore drugs and I love that the conversation talked about wellness.

[01:36] STEPHANIE: Yes it’s sort of like going to the gym.

[01:38] REENA JADHAV: Yeah I love that idea.

[01:40] STEPHANIE: Yeah the idea is that everybody has mental health issues, everybody’s crazy somewhere and everybody should be having some support around mental health, mindfulness and that this is part of our lives.

[01:52] REENA JADHAV: And I hate to say the word meditation because I know it’s loaded but I’m going to bring it up anyway. You know in the ancient days in the old days there used to be this concept east of India where you meditate you went to the temple are you going to some place and it’s all my balance, that cortisol balancing it first thing in the morning so you could face your day with strength you know, balance, yeah.

[02:23] STEPHANIE: We have some societal issues.

[02:26] REENA JADHAV: We do really and it’s like a lifestyle conversation not just about addressing mental health from a health perspective actually helping people with better coping mechanisms with education and a lot of that. Talk a little bit about what Vida does.

[02:40] STEPHANIE: So we have programs and signed it we also connects you to coaches and therapists so we can find digital therapeutics like [inaudible] so we have a program for my space stress reduction which is in hot demand right now because everyone is struggling with stress, it doesn’t  matter what your issues are where you live or how old you are doesn’t teens is a big issue right now, so we have class of your mind stress management, we have [inaudible] for depression, for stress, for anxiety we will match you with a therapist [inaudible] and so these are real issues that everyday people are dealing with across the entire United States and globally it’s a world class. 

[03:34] REENA JADHAV: Absolutely, you mentioned 64% so what are these the hard parts about you know,[inaudible] how do you track results someone has fever you get the medicine okay fever will came down very easy tracking, is this self performing?

[03:46] STEPHANIE: This is a piece and the standards for admission and then there are the guide standard measures.

[03:56] REENA JADHAV: Vida has been very successful, you have kind of a beacon of hope for those starters that are looking in you know, how do we get out of the market share with those of the listeners who are entrepreneurs, who are going how did you do a book of market that actually work what insights can you share on the go to market.

[04:12] STEPHANIE: Well I think you need to start with the consumer and the problem and understand that standard are really into people, talk to them understand today what issues they are facing, live and breathe the problem with customer and think about how to solve it.

[04:28] REENA JADHAV: How did pricing and business model what insights can you share on those two.

[04:33] STEPHANIE: You do need to think about pricing its normal healthcare because often times the consumers are not the buyers, so you really need to understand the incentives are for and what you are paying and what you know architecture looks like for those that are paying and then how you cost across the healthcare.

[04:56] REENA JADHAV: How is Vida priced?

[04:59] STEPHANIE: We are price per individual participant and we [inaudible] it is a standard benefit.

[05:10] REENA JADHAV: That’s wonderful. How was that process getting approved opposed to being one lined item that can’t get approved?

[05:17] STEPHANIE: There is a lot of examples of this, I think you know when you solve a real chronic condition or a mental health condition where there is clear evidence that lowering the cost of care either lowering the member of physicians visits or your visits or the admission, into the hospital you can look at claims saving, the pharmaceutical spending you can analyze the trends and then know why.

[05:47] REENA JADHAV: Has the spend been significant?  So are you seeing some clearer data that shows that for employer acts prior to Vida this was the spend as opposed to Vida.

[05:56] STRPHANIE: We take the claims data and we analyze for a year or what happened pre and post.

[06:01] REENA JADHAV: What’s the hardest part about your job?

[06:04] STEPHANIE: Well you know, it’s just every day you’re trying to do so many different things start up again and you know that we’re growing so fast that it’s always just have what’s the highest priority thing you need to do it there’s an expression that we often pointed his podcast on a masters scale that I love which is, ‘there’s a thousand fires burning’, there’s always that fire burning and you just have to know which ones to let burn and there will be a little which ones are really fires. But I need to think ahead so you eventually don’t have any of those fires; so it’s a constant balancing act.

[06:41] REENA JADHAV: Absolutely, for those listeners that are out there listening to you, getting yourself inspiring in terms of what you’ve accomplished what insights can you share for an upcoming female founder?

[06:54] STEPHANIE: Well I’ve said this part in other panels where I do think unfortunately for women and they are measured differently than men just a reality in the past, for today it’s going to change and I am hopeful. I’m very fortunate to have female investors on our part, I have canvas ventures and aspects I have Rebecca Lynn from Leading from canvas ventures such as our board is fantastic to be working with them and it is changing however I would say generally women are evaluated on numbers, metrics and what they’ve delivered and men are more evaluated on vision and promise it has just enough and you need to be able to paint a big vision as a woman but you also need to have the prove and it’s just a little harder.

[07:47] REENA JADHAV: Yes it is because out there aren’t as many options afforded in terms of okay we understand you could be the number that I think it’s a harder…

[08:00] STEPHANIE: More just aren’t there a lot of women investors so there’s a small number of women investors and then generally the venture capital community there is that this is an alien spoke eloquently about this at the Ricoh conference recently with her Swisher where she said there’s this good guy syndrome yeah like the venture have a single he’s a great guy and they want to work with yeah I think yeah he’s going to be great they just believe in the potential of that individual and I think you know that doesn’t happen as much for women I think it’s going to change.

[08:36] REENA JADHAV: As we get more female investors as well I think that will change. So going back to mental health we had a chat very briefly before we had records about the significant size of this crisis. What do you feel, how quickly do you think we can actually get it under control so we don’t have an existential crisis in America?

[08:57] STEPHANIE: Well I mean, you and I spoke about this that that there is in some ways it is an access is right you have 70% overweight 40% likely to develop diabetes mental health is here we have it would be a crisis  now that being said there’s hope because everyone recognizes that we can’t continue on this path and what I hope for and I would love to see is an Al Gore equivalent of you know when we when he took on climate change and created the inconvenient truth, I would like a movie that came out about health and I think doctor [inaudible]  just the fundamental impact our society and our economy and the wages are stagnating, You’re going like this, Suffering and so we have to invest in these in the service models and really help people and you’re seeing you’re seeing more and more hope I mean City Block which is funded and discussed on this panel and they’re going into communities and Medicaid and helping individuals out I saw a great talk by the CEO of Geisinger health, Where they took the most expensive individuals in the system they were costing two hundred thousand dollars a year they went in and gave them great nutrition services for two thousand dollars a year they reduce healthcare costs dramatically so there is clear evidence of these things work and work were becoming clear as a nation.

[10:26] REENA JADHAV: We just have to figure out how to scale. Thank you so much Stephanie, we appreciate it.

 

 

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