President of BetterUp Care, Omar Dawood on VatorNews podcast

Some takeaways...

-- Omar’s interest in healthcare began as a teenager struggling with stage 4 cancer.  

-- BetterUp Care is a proactive approach to mental health, focusing on resilience and flourishing versus a reactive approach to mental disorders that many other companies like Lyra and Ginger (now Headspace Health) have taken.

-- BetterUp Care is akin to a primary care doctor as gatekeeper to specialists and secondary care. Members go to BetterUp Care as the starting point. BetterUp Care guides (a person that acts as a concierge) who assesses the member to determine where to direct them. For instance, if a person is dealing with anxiety about not meeting sales goals, they may be directed to a program focused on sales. Or if a person is dealing with stress as a new manager, they may be directed to a program focused on developing leadership skills. Or if it’s a clinical challenge, a person may be directed to therapists or psychiatrists partnered with BetterUp.

-- BetterUp Care has no plans to hire therapists or psychiatrists as they’re laser focused on preventing mental decline and a therapist offering is more reactive. To this end, BetterUp Care is complementary to offerings such as Headspace Health, Calm and Lyra. 

-- BetterUp’s two recent acquisitions of Impraise and Motive underscore the company’s commitment to support people by collecting more personalized data that can help them better understand a member’s needs. Motive has AI that identifies emotions and shows how employees and customers feel about the products they're selling or consuming. Impraise helps managers grow their talent with continuous feedback loops. 

-- BetterUp isn’t collecting new data as much as it’s creating new insights from data collected. Like all organizations focused on mental health, they collect PHQ-9 and Gad-7 surveys. But there are other measurements of growth they’re creating. For instance, one measurement is a person’s likelihood to be promoted, or a person’s presenteeism. 

-- The mental health concerns of members today haven’t changed in decades but there are challenges around creating boundaries between personal and professional life and some stress around getting back into the office.

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