0:17

Hello everyone and welcome to From Lab to Launch

0:20

by Qualio. I'm Kelly, your host,

0:22

and I'm excited to, speak with you guys

0:24

today. Before we jump in, just

0:26

a reminder to please rate the show and

0:28

share it with any of your science nerd friends. We

0:30

know you have some. Also check out

0:32

the show notes if you have a story or product

0:34

you'd like to share with us today. I'm

0:36

very excited to have with us Ernie Wallerstein

0:39

Jr. President and CEO of

0:41

Mental Health Technologies, or MHT.

0:44

Ernie founded MHT back in 2018

0:46

and before that spent his career in

0:48

big tech startups. few other companies

0:50

along the way. You can read his full bio,

0:53

uh, in the show notes. Mental Health

0:55

Technologies is a cloud-based platform

0:57

for testing and screening patients for behavioral health

1:00

disorders at aids professionals in

1:02

addressing the growing challenge in providing services

1:04

for mental health and substance abuse. By

1:07

focusing on ease of use for both patients

1:09

and providers, objective data collection

1:12

and enhanced billing practices. Mh

1:14

t's goal is to horizontally integrate

1:16

the entire mental health process for healthcare

1:18

professionals. We'll get into,

1:21

uh, the tech and its applications here a little bit

1:23

more with Ernie. Thanks for joining us today.

1:25

Yep. Thank you, Kelly.

1:27

So jump right in. Tell us briefly about what

1:30

led you to jump from the tech and telecommunications

1:32

industry to addressing something as challenging

1:34

as mental health and substance abuse for healthcare.

1:37

you know, I appreciate that question. I was,

1:39

at that time I was president of Americas

1:42

for a publicly traded company in

1:44

2018. It was a company that acquired

1:46

a company I had run before that always

1:49

in software communications and cloud computing,

1:51

and was introduced to a psychiatrist who had this

1:53

idea for. Simplifying

1:56

what's called psychometric testing. Basically mental

1:58

health or substance abuse testing, and

2:01

providing that information to healthcare providers

2:03

so they can provide a better, better care for

2:06

their patients and wellness. And with the growing

2:08

concern around mental health, um,

2:11

he, he had this great idea, but he wasn't a technologist,

2:13

he wasn't a business person, didn't know how to do it. And I,

2:15

I just jumped at it. I, um,

2:18

I'd had a good career, uh, up, um,

2:20

up to that point. Thought

2:22

this was something a lot more meaningful to go do.

2:25

And there is a, there

2:27

is an opportunity for technology.

2:30

Technology's not gonna solve the mental health issue, but

2:32

can help close that ca chasm a little bit. And

2:35

it was an opportunity. So it was really good. Perfect

2:37

timing. I met this psychiatrist. It was a great guy.

2:39

And three weeks later I gave my company notice that,

2:42

hey, I'm gonna go find a new president. I'm gonna

2:44

go do this, uh, this thing that I thinks a. More

2:47

important. And, and if nothing else, Kelly

2:49

gets me a little higher on Maslow's, uh, hierarchy

2:51

of needs and a little self-actualization going on

2:55

Oh, I love that story. And, and I love too. It's, it's

2:57

exciting to, uh, to have folks,

2:59

you know, Partnering with

3:02

industry, right? We we're, we're rife with people

3:04

with radars, but maybe don't know how

3:06

to do the tech side or don't know how to, you

3:08

know, optimize this, this idea that they have.

3:11

So good on you for taking that on. What

3:13

about this technology, um, makes

3:16

it so a clinic or a physician would want to use

3:18

it?

3:19

I think, the healthcare industry or, or

3:21

the population in general realizes the, the

3:23

growing concern around. Mental health,

3:26

and I use the term behavioral health and that that

3:28

encapsulates mental health and substance abuse.

3:30

So that, so I'll use the behavioral health term.

3:33

Um, it's, it's this massively

3:36

growing concern. And I know, you know, COVID grabbed everyone's

3:38

attention. Um, but,

3:41

um, you know, behavioral health is

3:43

probably a larger healthcare issue and Covid actually

3:45

exacerbated that problem big

3:47

time. And, you know, healthcare,

3:50

healthcare professionals. Um,

3:52

have been wanting to know this information.

3:54

They're intimidated by it. Right. So,

3:57

you know, the vast majority of healthcare happens

3:59

at primary care and primary care.

4:01

Physic physicians can easily be overwhelmed, um,

4:03

dealing with behavioral health issues. And

4:06

quite honestly, there's not enough behavioral health professionals

4:09

to help all the people who need help. Right.

4:12

So, you know, the key

4:14

for mental health technologies are companies

4:16

like, Is in order to identify

4:18

people who need help, but also stratify the level

4:20

of help they need. Um, you know, and

4:22

technology can do that, right? So you're using these standard

4:24

screeners and it's not perfect, but

4:27

it's going to give you a snapshot. It's like an

4:30

s a t test, if you will, for

4:32

different disorders.

4:35

And it allows you to have a snapshot of where that person's at.

4:37

And based on that makes,

4:39

um, Proactive decisions

4:41

of, of what kind of help they can need. Can they, can they

4:43

get some self-help? Can they just get some aided

4:46

tools on the web? Do they need to talk to a

4:48

therapist? Do they need to talk to a psychiatrist?

4:50

Is this person potentially suicidal?

4:53

So using this technology, we make that information

4:55

in real time available to healthcare

4:57

professionals when a patient has an appointment. Wow.

5:02

What kind of impact are you seeing already then

5:04

with this?

5:05

So, you know, I, I'll use the most obvious example,

5:07

right? So the most obvious example would be like suicidal

5:10

thoughts, suicidal ideation. And that's just a

5:12

small piece of what we do, right? So

5:14

last year we did a little bit over 25,000

5:17

depression screens. Um, and

5:21

in those depression screens, adults, people

5:23

18 and older, um, about 9%

5:25

of the time they had suicidal. So

5:27

they're admitting that, hey, they think about it, right?

5:30

The more alarming number for me was we,

5:32

we also tested a really good pool of children,

5:35

11 to 17. And

5:37

the propensity for suicidal ideation there was almost

5:39

20% oof. So

5:41

that's scary. And you know, statistically,

5:44

if you look at like the CDC stats, um,

5:47

50% of all behavioral health issues go

5:49

undiagnosed or untreated. Right.

5:52

And then last year there were about 900 million

5:54

doctor visits in the us. The average US

5:56

citizen goes to the doctor 2.7 times a year,

5:59

right? So let's just do the math. So,

6:02

um, at about 20% of the

6:04

time, someone's gonna have a behavioral health disorder.

6:06

So 900 million visits, 20%

6:09

of the time, that's 180 million times people

6:11

went to the doctor who had a behavioral health issue,

6:14

and statistically 90 million times

6:16

no one did anything about. Oh man.

6:18

Right. And, and this is, you know, this is the

6:20

United States. The problem's worse elsewhere.

6:22

Like I'm, I'm talking to a company in the uk, they're

6:25

way less prepared for this. So

6:28

as bad as it is here, it's even worse

6:31

elsewhere in the world. So, you know, uh, that's

6:33

some of the goal for mht will start here. The

6:35

nice thing is technology, you know, technology

6:37

travels well, right? So,

6:40

um, the goal would be to take this and,

6:43

and, and expand the footprint and,

6:45

and bring this solution in other. In

6:47

other avenues, right? So in the US it's

6:50

a little bit easier because it's, it's

6:52

reimbursable. So there's a financial aspect

6:54

to this because we're in a commercial environment for

6:56

healthcare. Well, when you go

6:58

elsewhere in the world, a lot of it's social medicine.

7:01

But the big thing there is they, they need

7:03

to know how big the problem is. Right? So,

7:06

you know, you're London. And

7:09

you want to know in 2030, how many depressed

7:11

people, how many people with anxiety, so you start

7:13

taking this data that we're accumulating and

7:15

you cross-reference that, and you're

7:17

starting to be able to now model on

7:20

a population basis behavioral health needs.

7:22

Because like I said before, Kelly,

7:24

there's not gonna be enough people to help everybody who needs help. So you

7:27

have to build platforms, systems.

7:30

Methodologies tools, right.

7:32

Technology, non-technology. Technology

7:34

is part of the solution. It's also part of the cause.

7:36

Right, right, right. It's, it's this, it's

7:38

a quite a dichotomy, right? Because technology,

7:41

especially with kids, is a contributing factor to this

7:43

problem. Right.

7:44

So. Right. That's interesting too.

7:46

And I, I, I've often wondered, uh, you know, uh,

7:50

when you go outside of the US right, you know, it's,

7:52

it's, yeah. You hear in the news, right, that,

7:54

you know, US has all these mental health problems.

7:56

It's nowhere else. And I wonder sometimes,

7:58

I mean, is that. Are we less afraid to talk about

8:00

it? Is it because we're in a,

8:03

you know, reimbursable payer model with

8:05

our healthcare system that while it

8:07

has its drawbacks, that

8:09

makes it a little more accessible to us too?

8:11

I wonder, I wonder why that

8:13

is. You know, I'm not, I'm not,

8:16

you know, clinical enough to, to answer

8:18

that. But based on having done this for four years

8:20

and all these touch points, right, and, and seeing

8:22

results from hundreds of thousands of tests, um,

8:25

and having conversations with people outside the us, I

8:28

think. You know, for lack of a better term,

8:30

I mean, we're more. Right

8:32

now than the rest of the world. We're

8:34

more in tune with this. We're way more

8:36

technologically enabled on average

8:38

than the rest of the world. Right. Like, you know, if you think

8:40

about it, you know, so China's this massive

8:43

economy and yeah, there's 200 million people with

8:45

tons of technology. There's a billion who don't have

8:47

technology. Right. India. Right, right. India, all

8:49

these people, so like on average, There's

8:51

a lot more access, accessibility to,

8:54

to technology, and again, to the, to the prior

8:56

point, technology is both a cause

8:58

and also part of the solution, right?

9:00

So, um, I,

9:03

you know, the, the, the upside, I think

9:05

Kelly is our kids. The kids,

9:08

the generation behind us. Like I have two boys, right? And they're

9:11

way better at talking about this, right?

9:13

They're way better at talking about social issues

9:15

than we. Than

9:17

I was Right?

9:20

Uh, and the,

9:22

they, they're

9:25

also massively influenced, right? I always

9:27

give this analogy of like, you know, when I was a kid,

9:29

uh, you know, if there was a bully, I had

9:31

two choice chance choices, right? I fought

9:34

or I ran, right? Like, that's your two chances, right? Mm-hmm.

9:36

today, bullies are virtual, right?

9:38

You could be a 10 year old girl and have.

9:41

30,000, you know, 3000 people

9:44

commenting on your Facebook post or,

9:46

or your instant post. Right. Right. And it, that's insane.

9:49

So anyway, I, I, I, I

9:51

think what, what we do at mental health technologies, we try

9:53

to inform healthcare professionals to have a better

9:55

snapshot of where their, where their patient

9:57

is. And, and I really have a

10:00

personal hope that. It has

10:02

an impact on the generations behind us to give

10:04

them a little bit of better starting spot. Cause I don't, I

10:06

don't know that we've given them the best starting spot.

10:08

No, we haven't. And I, and I think too,

10:11

you know, even when we had,

10:13

or maybe we were on a better track, you

10:15

know, than we have covid, you know, you mentioned

10:17

that earlier. Sure. You know, we saw several, several

10:20

headlines about the increase in mental health,

10:22

substance abuse problems since the pandemic.

10:24

I mean, I, I had two kids, I have two kids

10:26

as well, right. Who. Figure out how to homeschool

10:29

and all those things, and then go back and, and

10:31

it really, you know, I think my, my older

10:33

son is a little better equipped. My younger daughter

10:35

is kind of struggling with the social aspects

10:38

of having been stuck at home for a year

10:40

and a half. Sure. Isolation ist tough.

10:42

Yeah. And it really is. It really is. And so,

10:44

yeah, she spends more time on her device and yet that

10:47

makes things worse. So how, how,

10:50

how has the pandemic changed your product

10:52

or your strategy? You big impact

10:54

there.

10:55

Yeah. So that's interesting, right? So, um, and

10:57

again, you know, and some of this is supposed to be, we're having this, uh,

10:59

really good, uh, uh, um, social conversation,

11:02

and some of this is supposed to be about tech, right? um,

11:05

right. The, so the pandemic impacted

11:07

us twice, right? So, um,

11:09

and in the, in the long run, the

11:11

pandemic itself, sh i,

11:13

I believe at least in the United States, has shined the light

11:15

on the behavioral health issue and how important

11:17

this is. Right? On the back end of Covid,

11:20

there is. Using your daughter

11:22

as an example. There's this long trail of people

11:24

that were impacted on it by it, right? So

11:27

the, the initial part was our audience,

11:29

our healthcare providers, right? We're a b2b, we're not

11:31

a b2c. So we built a technology that

11:34

is very easy to use

11:36

in a healthcare environment so they can provide

11:38

this testing and screening, if you will,

11:40

to their patient population. So

11:43

covid hits, right, and

11:45

that slows the entire market down because

11:48

healthcare industry had to learn how to do tele. Right.

11:51

So you have a vastly,

11:54

the, the average doctor, nurse,

11:57

physician's assistant isn't a techie, right?

11:59

They're clinical. And so they had to learn

12:01

technology. They had to learn how to do video conferencing, right?

12:04

Like, you know, zoom, nobody

12:06

benefited more than Zoom, right? So, right.

12:08

So that slowed down. Like they

12:11

knew they needed to do this, but, Hey, hold on a second.

12:13

I, I gotta show how my, the, I have to show

12:15

a doctor how to do a video conference. And

12:18

I have to teach my admin staff how to tee

12:20

up that video conference call on behalf of the doctor.

12:22

Right? So all that happened, so it slowed us down a

12:24

little bit. But again, the, it's shown

12:26

a, it, it shined a big light on behavioral

12:29

health. The bigger issue, Kelly

12:31

was on the back end of Covid,

12:33

there was a massive impact on the US

12:35

workforce. People didn't go back to work.

12:38

So the admin, so we built

12:40

this tool, right? So I come from

12:42

a, a cloud computing, uh, background, my CTO.

12:45

From a cloud computing background, and we, you know, we

12:47

really focus on ui, user experience,

12:50

ux, how, how do we make this as easy as

12:52

possible to administrate Great.

12:54

Back into Covid there was

12:56

no one to train on how to use the tool because

12:58

the administrative, the administrative

13:01

administrative layer in healthcare is an,

13:03

an entirely transient. Unbelievably,

13:07

uh, uh, vicious cycle of turnover,

13:09

right? Like I, I have cu right? I have a customer

13:11

who had 120% turnover of their admin

13:13

staff, so they Oh, geez. Turned everybody over,

13:15

trained people and still lost another 20%,

13:18

right? So on the back end,

13:20

we spent the vast majority of last year,

13:22

Kelly, automating the entire process. So

13:24

no one has to touch mht. So

13:27

we integrate with the back office

13:29

application and healthcare, which is called an ehr,

13:31

electronic health record. Mm-hmm. We

13:34

get triggers based on appointments. We

13:36

algorithmically figure out if the patient

13:38

should be tested and what test they get based on the rules

13:41

of that healthcare clinic. They tell us what the rules are.

13:43

We built the tool, the wizard, we

13:45

te, we send an email or text message to the

13:47

patient. They take it and then we write

13:49

those results to the ehr. So

13:52

we actually spent the entire year

13:55

of 2022 making it so that our

13:57

customers actually don't touch

13:59

mht. Everything resides in their ehr,

14:02

which is their single source of truth. Right?

14:04

Right. So for all intent and purposes,

14:06

m mht becomes a system of action. And

14:09

the EHR is a system of record. Right?

14:11

Nice. It would be, right. So, you know, an

14:13

analogy to that would be in like, you know, financial services,

14:16

right? Everything sits in their financial

14:18

app, their Jack Henry or their Fiserv

14:21

application, right? But there's all these tools hanging

14:23

off it, but nobody touches those tools.

14:25

Everything resides in their single source of truth. So

14:28

in in healthcare, that's the ehr.

14:30

Right, right. I know my, my brain is spinning

14:32

now. You know, here at Klio we're in software as well, and

14:34

we're always talking about the data and where

14:37

it resides and whether or not we have to protect it. And of course

14:39

in the life sciences industry, you have things like

14:41

complaint files, but complaint files

14:43

can contain P H I. And how is that pro,

14:45

yeah. Sorry, I was spinning there for a second

14:47

on, wow, that's, yeah. Well that's, how

14:49

do you. Architect, all of that

14:51

to then protect the data and all. That's,

14:54

that's quite a complex

14:54

problem. Yeah. So, so we, we actually

14:57

thought of that in advance, right? Because when we

14:59

built M H T, and

15:01

again, luckily, you know, I both

15:04

unluckily and luckily I'm not a, I

15:06

wasn't a 25 year old starting a tech company,

15:08

right? So the unlucky part is I'm not

15:10

a 25 year old person starting a, a

15:13

tech company. That's the horrible part. Uh,

15:15

the upside is you, Already

15:17

knew some of the things we needed to do as table stakes,

15:19

if you will. So we actually built

15:22

MH t on, you know, a

15:24

cloud platform that's easily portable.

15:26

And we normalized and built

15:28

out the er, the, the data dictionary in

15:30

a way that we knew it's

15:33

already fully encrypted. It sits on an encrypted,

15:35

um, instance, and

15:38

we can take that and replicate

15:40

it in another country. Right.

15:43

So we, we actually built this

15:45

with the idea, um,

15:47

of very quickly going to the UK

15:50

and going, going to the uk, going

15:52

to, um, Canada.

15:54

Um, even though the, the, the, the products

15:57

is, is multilingual, right? So especially

15:59

in the US it's, it's English and Spanish, right? So we know from

16:01

the EHR if the person is

16:04

Hispanic, and then we would send the test in

16:06

Spanish. Wow. It's important. It's

16:08

important to me. Yeah. Cause I'm, I'm actually, I'm a Cuban background,

16:10

right. My family are immigrants from Cuba. So that was an important

16:12

piece of it. That is

16:13

important. Absolutely. No, and, and making

16:15

it, um, you know, friendly

16:18

and accessible, you know, to, to people

16:20

where it's already. You know, there's, there's

16:22

this, I don't know, segment of the population,

16:24

right? That they don't trust technology anyway

16:27

and yet Oh yeah. They're probably more

16:29

in need of, of some of these

16:31

kinds of services. And so it's like you

16:33

gotta overcome this idea that you're not

16:35

gonna just be talking to a person. Um,

16:38

it is a great point. That's actually something we're

16:40

still trying to crack the code on because there,

16:44

there is a massive part of the United States

16:47

population that is, Underserved,

16:49

for lack of a better term in healthcare. And

16:52

that underserved community, by and large, does

16:54

not trust the federal government and does not trust

16:56

institutionalized solutions.

16:59

So, so we have to figure

17:01

out other ways. So like we're, we're in a community,

17:03

uh, mental health center and we're actually gonna put

17:05

a, make it as non intru when they walk in,

17:08

there'll be a kiosk there and

17:10

they can take their tests. They, they,

17:12

they can do it anonymously, like, so

17:15

we're making it as easy as possible to get this

17:17

data so that the healthcare provider knows

17:19

if there's something that needs to be addressed beyond

17:22

the primary complaint. Right. You

17:24

know, the analogy Kelly would be, you know, I go in

17:26

cause I can't sleep. Mm-hmm well am

17:28

I depressed cause I can't sleep or am I not sleeping cause

17:31

I'm depressed. That's an important part of

17:33

find finding out the root cause, right?

17:35

Absolutely. Absolutely. Uh,

17:39

Pivot a little bit. We have a lot of

17:41

founders, um, who tune into the show

17:43

and, uh, our founders, um, have

17:45

lost at least a few hours of sleep along

17:48

the way on their go-to-market strategy. Walk

17:50

us through your go-to market strategy at

17:52

M H T.

17:53

Sure. So we made a conscious decision

17:55

to go B2B versus b2c.

17:57

So our customers are healthcare clinics,

17:59

our healthcare providers, right? So,

18:03

So from a G dm, we're not spending

18:05

a lot of time on consumer based marketing.

18:08

Right. And, and that's on purpose. Like,

18:10

at least from my experience, that's a different thing.

18:13

That's a, that's a different animal. It's

18:15

actually not my background. So that had something to do

18:17

with it. But that's not the lead. Cause there was just,

18:20

there's other companies like M H C out there, they're

18:22

more focused on the consumer and doing some

18:24

type of self-help tools. And then, We,

18:28

we took the stance of it's, let's

18:30

get this information in the people that are providing the care,

18:32

right? So the real key

18:34

for us is primary care

18:36

and then automating a referral to behavioral health.

18:39

So we do that. We auto, so you go to primary

18:41

care and if you indicate, we'll ask you if you wanna talk to

18:43

a behavioral health professional, we'll automate that referral.

18:45

So we take the people out of making

18:48

that decision and make that much more efficient. Um,

18:52

In terms of our go-to-market strategy, we focus

18:54

on healthcare providers. We're, we're mainly focused

18:57

on large, private, and we build

18:59

our, our entire strategy, Kelly is around

19:02

a hub. So basically we

19:04

get a large

19:07

behavioral health provider that has a

19:09

couple different attributes. The

19:12

biggest one is they have capacity, they

19:14

have the ability to take on more patients, right?

19:18

And we work with them, they start

19:20

using M H T, but then we actually partner

19:22

with them and go after primary care providers

19:25

in their geo to

19:27

automate the referral process. So,

19:30

um, so that's really our go-to-market.

19:32

Our go-to-market is a hub and spoke approach and

19:35

it is around b2b. Does that make sense? Yeah,

19:37

yeah.

19:37

No, that makes, that makes perfect sense. Know, and,

19:39

and. B2B situation that,

19:43

and it took a while to get that going. Right. So,

19:45

um, it, it took a while and now it's

19:47

taking off because I think the primary care providers

19:50

are, I

19:53

think they're, things have calmed down from Covid and they realize

19:55

that they have to go address this. Yeah. And

19:57

they're, they're just way more open to it. And, you

20:00

know, using mht whilst

20:02

providing massive clinical value, it's also,

20:05

there's a financial benefit to it, which is, it's critical

20:08

in healthcare.

20:09

Right. Right. And anytime we can simplify

20:11

that too, then you start to see a little

20:13

bit of that whole economy of scale thing. You

20:15

know, instead of referring these things out, or

20:17

do I need to refer these things out? That kind

20:20

of thing. The doctors actually have the brain

20:22

space to

20:22

engage. Sure. And they have

20:24

data points, right. So instead of having, so,

20:26

you know, doctors are doctors, nurses, and PAs,

20:29

physicians assistants, right? They're flying around.

20:32

They're seeing 2, 3, 4 people an

20:34

hour, and it's hard for them to

20:36

engage the conversation, but

20:38

we're giving them a heads up and saying, Hey,

20:40

here's a snapshot. Here's this Polaroid

20:42

of where they're at. Start the conversation

20:45

two minutes in. And that's critical

20:47

to them, right? From a time efficiency standpoint.

20:49

Definitely.

20:51

Well, we love seeing tech like this that's very patient-centered

20:53

as well. How do you see this tech and its

20:55

applications evolving over the next decade?

20:59

So I think I, I, I think the future

21:02

for m H T is we

21:04

are going to, uh, um,

21:06

really focus like, uh, like when you talked about I go

21:08

to market, we we're now more focused

21:10

on business development partnering

21:13

with people than we are marketing

21:15

itself. Like we do a ton of marketing. We're really good at

21:17

social media, but our big

21:20

thing is we, we look at,

21:22

we look at behavioral health and our technology.

21:25

As sort of a highway, right? So

21:27

you are screening people for behavioral

21:29

health issues. Now they're on a road. You need

21:31

a bunch of exit ramps, right? Because

21:34

some people can do self-help, some people can go

21:36

to website, get help. Some people need to see a therapist,

21:39

and the last thing you want them to do is go

21:41

to the emergency room, right? The behavioral

21:43

health issue in the United States is overwhelming emergency

21:45

rooms in the us Yeah, right? It is a significant

21:47

percent. So our, the evolution

21:50

is we will continue to work with.

21:53

Complimentary solutions in behavioral health

21:56

that become part of this,

21:58

this continuum of, of

22:00

behavioral health services and the screening.

22:03

Um, the, the, the other aspects of

22:05

this, the biggest thing I see, um,

22:08

Kelly, is we're going to

22:10

take all this data, um, we're

22:12

going to cross reference and correlate it, you

22:14

know, from a business intelligence standpoint with

22:17

treatments. So we could do efficacy of treatment,

22:20

but also do that based on ethnicity, sexual

22:24

orientation, um, you

22:26

know, demographics and

22:29

actually start building a model

22:31

that starts predicting behavioral

22:34

health issues on a population basis. So,

22:37

you know, I actually

22:39

always thought from the beginning, that is

22:41

the biggest thing we'll do. The biggest thing we'll

22:43

do is allow a population to understand

22:46

both the. And the propensity

22:48

for behavioral health issues so they can build programs

22:51

to be ready for that. Because right now it's,

22:53

we are 100% reactive

22:56

to behavioral health issues. Now we're not

22:59

in the proactive world. And where I see MHT

23:01

going is, is getting into the proactive,

23:04

like algorithmically using ai, start

23:07

figuring out that based on these

23:10

social determinants of health, based on

23:12

that ethnicity, based on. um,

23:15

uh, that economic status, we

23:17

need to go test that person proactively every three

23:19

months and see how they're doing. Whereas

23:22

we don't, or we need to somebody who's

23:24

affluent, but they're in this

23:26

area, maybe we need to test

23:28

them for stress every few months. That

23:31

gets proactive and then hopefully

23:34

we start cracking the code a little bit and

23:36

we actually get ahead of this a little bit, cuz right now we're

23:38

totally behind it.

23:39

Yeah. The, the, the proactive ideas

23:41

is, Is pretty impressive. That's,

23:43

and it's, it's interesting. That's, that's

23:45

been a common thread and a lot of, a

23:47

lot of the folks I've talked to on this podcast, we talk

23:50

a lot about, you know, we would like to amass

23:52

this data and then really start to leverage it.

23:54

Or, or maybe they already have a lot of data

23:56

and how do we start to look at. now that

23:58

we have so much more power in analytics

24:00

and, and sure. The, the AI predictor models,

24:03

all that kind of stuff. Um, at

24:05

the same time, it feels a little intrusive.

24:08

Um, you know, maybe to those of us

24:10

who aren't quite so used to having my whole life

24:12

be on a computer. But

24:14

there's, there's good, there, there's,

24:16

yeah, there's an Orwellian aspect to it, right?

24:18

So a little bit. A little bit. So

24:20

that's the other key to this thing, right? So the other key

24:22

to, like the way we did mht is we, we

24:25

just. We send someone

24:27

a link from their trusted

24:29

advisor, which is their doctor, and say, Hey,

24:32

we're asking you to take these. It's entirely up

24:34

to them if they take it or not. No one's putting a piece of

24:36

paper in front of them. They could take it at their leisure,

24:38

they could take it on their computer, they could take it on their email.

24:40

Like the one your data point I'll give you, somebody

24:42

asked me like, all, what do you do in an older generation, right?

24:45

So Medicare people are a big part

24:47

of our population that go see the doctor. We

24:50

had, uh, ran stats, so over

24:52

the last year, Um, 45%

24:56

of everyone 65 and older, we sent these

24:58

to completed 'em the first time. We

25:00

sent them a link. Another 15% did

25:02

it on the reminder. So 60% of people

25:05

with over 10,000 data points were completing

25:07

these assessments on their computer or their cell phone might

25:10

take 'em a little longer, but they do it at their pace. They

25:12

make the font the size they want, and they're

25:14

doing it and they're comfortable doing it. That's

25:16

part of this, right? It's gotta be on

25:18

your terms when you're talking about yourself.

25:21

Right. Right. Definitely. I

25:23

love that. Well, pivoting

25:25

a little bit again. So if you could go

25:28

back to the start of your career mm-hmm. what

25:30

would you tell yourself based on what you know now?

25:33

Uh,

25:33

less sugars Um, I

25:38

I, I think I, you know, um,

25:41

I would've focused more on

25:43

automation day one. So people

25:46

talk about ai, uh, and, you know,

25:48

look, I, I, I'm a bit older

25:50

and was writing code a very long

25:52

time ago, and what people call ai, a lot of times

25:54

I think people use the term a little loosely sometimes

25:57

it's really bi instead of ai. Um,

26:00

but leveraging

26:03

data, to your point, just a second ago

26:05

and algorithmically. Deducing

26:08

figuring some stuff out and proactively

26:11

going to your customer and saying, Hey, here's a model

26:13

that might work for you based on these million

26:15

data points. I, I think I would've

26:17

gotten into that a lot earlier.

26:19

I think in most technology companies, we

26:22

think about data aggregation and business intelligence

26:24

as a result of what we're doing versus

26:27

as the driver for what we're going to do. And

26:30

I think if I went back, you

26:32

know, the 30 plus years I've been doing, I

26:36

would've told myself, Hey, really think

26:38

of the data as potentially

26:41

one of your three key deliverables. And

26:43

the end point, not, not the,

26:46

not the result, but actually a goal. Yeah. Um,

26:49

because, and what we do

26:51

here, it, I,

26:53

I, you know, it, it over, I, I don't mean

26:55

to overman romanticize it. The only

26:57

way to get in front of this behavioral health issue is for

26:59

us to start proactively figuring out who's gonna

27:01

need the help before they figure out they need help.

27:04

Yeah. So, you know, I, I, I, I

27:06

think that was a, just curious answer to your question, but

27:08

I think going

27:10

backwards to make it more succinct, I would've,

27:12

I would tell myself, Hey, really think of the data

27:15

and what that value is, and architect

27:17

the product around that being one of the key

27:19

results.

27:20

I can, I can see that, definitely. Yeah.

27:23

I've been in the industry a long time. The same

27:25

thing, you know, different industry, of course, life

27:27

sciences, but yeah, feels like we're kind of chasing,

27:29

chasing the data instead of letting the data inform,

27:33

so inform and also drive some of the technology

27:35

decisions. We, we, we, you know, I think

27:38

by and large data is an outcome of

27:40

our products, and we didn't necessarily

27:43

architect our products with

27:45

an intent of resulting data.

27:49

and that, and, and there's, and

27:51

it's, that's probably a deeper line

27:53

than I'm giving a credit for, but when

27:55

you think of a product, you architect it, you

27:58

start manifesting it, you start doing

28:00

all your storyboards. If one

28:02

of your key deliverables is okay, how does

28:04

this data going to change the narrative?

28:07

It will have an impact on how you design your product.

28:11

Another fun question I'd love to ask,

28:13

please. If I walked into Barnes

28:15

and Noble, where would I find

28:17

you? What section?

28:21

Uh, that's

28:23

a good question. I it wouldn't be in life sciences.

28:25

This is actually a technology solution. I defer the clinicals.

28:28

This isn't the clinical stuff

28:30

I defer to other people for this is a technology

28:32

thing. So where would you find me? In the Barnes

28:34

and Nobles, uh,

28:36

you know, nonfiction and. And

28:40

y y uh, somewhere

28:42

where you talk about like, uh, humbling success.

28:44

I, I, I, I come from a

28:47

immigrant family. My parents immigrated here.

28:49

Like, you know, they came from Cuba. They had to leave the country

28:51

in two days, um,

28:53

in a couple days, um, with three

28:55

kids and my mother pregnant. Um, oh geez. We,

28:58

we were a very tight family. We didn't grow

29:00

up with much. And I, I

29:02

have very successful brothers and sisters as well,

29:04

and I'm proud of that. I'm proud

29:06

of my family and I think that,

29:09

Um, where

29:11

you'd find me now hopefully isn't where you find me in the

29:13

end because I think, you know, I've done tech for a while

29:15

and all the tech was business stuff. Um,

29:17

I'm really hoping that m h t has more

29:20

of a human impact than some

29:22

of the other stuff I've done before.

29:25

Uh, sounds like you're, uh, well on that

29:26

path. Uh, I, I certainly

29:29

hope so. I enjoy. I'll

29:31

tell you, Kelly, I, I love this like, it

29:33

is, it is a pure techy thing that

29:35

we're. There's, you know, encryption

29:38

phi, delivering this stuff,

29:41

uh, you know, results of this. Did

29:43

a text go? Did a text not go? What do you do with that

29:46

preference for communication? How do you present

29:49

this information in a very easy,

29:51

non-intrusive way to healthcare professionals? Like,

29:53

that's all the tech stuff, right? Mm-hmm.

29:55

but, but impacting

29:57

people's lives and maybe helping some people not commit suicide.

30:01

That's, that's huge. It's cool. That's

30:03

huge. And, and, and it, and it, uh,

30:05

I thoroughly enjoy

30:08

the team I work with and that we're doing that.

30:11

That's exciting. Well, where can folks go to

30:13

connect with you and follow along with company's progress?

30:16

Uh, so mh tech, so mh

30:19

tech.com and all our LinkedIn

30:21

profiles are there. Uh, I am

30:23

not basically on social whatsoever other

30:25

than LinkedIn. Um, I am

30:27

happy to talk to anybody who's interested, um,

30:29

either. Um, in

30:32

the beginning of their journey, like, you know, I, I, I

30:34

have, I've, last thing I'll close with, I've had

30:36

a, I've been very fortunate to have some great mentors

30:38

in my career and, and I owe that back

30:40

to some people. So, people want to just talk

30:42

about how to do this or what they're doing

30:45

or their ideas. I'm, you know, happy to talk to your

30:47

audience.

30:48

Excellent. Well, thank you so much for your time today,

30:50

Ernie. Really appreciate it.

30:51

What a great story. Thank you so much.

30:53

Appreciate your time.