SilverCloud Health: clinical innovation, global impact

SilverCloud Health is a company born from academic and clinical research at Trinity College Dublin and Mater University Hospital focussing on digital delivery of mental healthcare. SilverCloud Health spun out in 2012 from over a decade of research, and by 2018, claims to have revolutionized how technology is used to address some of the key challenges in healthcare.

SilverCloud’s team of clinicians, data scientists, technologists and researchers have spent over 15 years optimizing the clinical delivery of effective online behavioural health solutions, empowering users to think and feel better.

“Our goal is to use technology to tear down the barriers that prevent many people from receiving the care they need,” explains Kevin Higgins, CFO of SilverCloud. “Our interactive and customizable programmes are accessible anywhere, at any time. This overcomes obstacles that might prevent patients from accessing mental health services, such as a lack of clinicians, limited transportation, privacy or stigma concerns. Digital access to treatment also helps in reducing waiting time.”

“We started off looking mainly at depression and anxiety, but we have since enlarged the scope of our work, constantly refining the product and introducing new ideas. Our library is growing rapidly. We will be launching new products on Sleep and Resilience by the end of 2018 and we’re also looking at personal finance stress and what we call ‘Money Worries’, as well as eating disorders – a project we’re developing with Stanford University. We have well over 30 evidenced-based programmes and working with more than 200 organisations worldwide, we’ve helped more than 200,000 patients since 2012, with half of those being delivered through the platform in the past 12 months alone” says Kevin.

When it comes to outcomes, Kevin explains that the clinically validated platform’s performance is quite impressive: “73% of our patients see significant improvement after 6-8 weeks on the platform. Cases of ‘severe symptoms’ drop from 12% to 4% after using the platform, and ‘moderately severe’ cases from 20% to 8%, putting our outcomes on par with face-to-face outcomes.”

In late 2016, SilverCloud received an important equity investment from ACT Venture Capital, a venture capital firm backed by the EIF and the EU. ”The investment allowed us to scale up our activity. We set up an office in the US - a sales team with a physical base. It really breathed new life into the business, allowing us to expand the business significantly and double our staff numbers. Without it, our ticket size would have inevitably been smaller and everything would have been moving at a much slower pace.” Looking ahead, SilverCloud is keen to move into the wearables space, using wearable technology in combination with the platform in order to provide even better mental health services.

Company: SilverCloud Health (Ireland)

Type of business: ICT, healthcare

EIF financing: COSME EFG

Financial intermediary: ACT Venture Capital

For further information about EIF intermediaries in Ireland, please refer to: http://www.eif.org/what_we_do/where/ie