Ushma

I wrote about the mental health tech market in the UK for the Hemingway Report. Esp for operators overseas looking to expand, or people in the UK considering starting up in mental health. thehemingwayreport.beehiiv.com/p/31-a-guide-t… Let me know what you think!

Just received my certificate for How to Become a Supermanager with AI 🙌 Check out this cohort-based course from @mavenhq 👇 maven.com/hilary-gridley…

@PolyglotMind @saranormous @mvernal Thanks! Will check out the book. Nice synthesis summary

@ushma_17 @saranormous @mvernal Absolutely! Tech-enabled solutions have incredible potential to support multilingual families. Beyond just language acquisition, integrating cultural context is key for long-term fluency and identity formation. 🚀 #Multilingualism x.com/PolyglotMind/s…

5/ perhaps you could even make it configurable from entertaining <> efficient? yes, edutainment can masquerade as education, but Percy Jackson got my daughter interested in Greek history and mythology…

@saranormous @mvernal Really bullish on tech enabled solutions that cater to edge cases for bilingual / trilingual parents (eg our ideal combo would be English, Gujarati, Bosnian). Lots of ways to make the education level up with the child and add cultural understanding over time. Would pay $$$

@saranormous @mvernal Raising a bilingual two year old and the speed of language acquisition makes me sad I don't have better tools. Low tech approach I'm using now is based on a book about learning to read and making my own bilingual flashcards. Like that it's not a screen though

@andrewjb_ Love it. Happy to chat on 2

so, interim update re what's next: 1. pilgrimage across Britain, while reading & writing about the importance & aesthetics of progress, how that fits into UK nation building, & the role of land/nature 2. figuring out best way to accelerate strategic tech & national purpose, at scale [e.g. startups/govt/vc/policy] 3. working with @ukdayone on i) vc & industrial strategy and ii) reforming core reg markets [energy, telcos, water, etc.] if any of those of interest, let's chat

@NespressoUK love your machines so we've been sad to have a Christmas without coffee due to our faulty machine being picked up three times from the wrong address despite my husband spending hours of his time off on the phone to customer service to confirm. Can you help?

@ellenjdasilva @chrissyfarr @joinsummer Thank you! Have signed up, will share with others too!

@ushma_17 @chrissyfarr @joinsummer Not yet but we have been asked countless times. I put up a waitlist form here. Help me share it and if we get 100+ signups I'll consider it! kx51agwsvy5.typeform.com/to/ZirrO3JX?ut…

I keep thinking that there could be a killer consumer health brand that’s: - cash pay, subscription - mostly async - the entire brand identity is around not dismissing patients for their symptoms - a care team, not just MDs - incorporates curated patient feedback

@ellenjdasilva @chrissyfarr @joinsummer Any chance it's coming to the UK? :)

@chrissyfarr Summer Health pediatric care is exactly this! @joinsummer is: -Cash pay -All async -Brand entirely for the customer -Same clinician each time -Exclusively pediatricians + peds specialty care

Whoever created the Taylor Swift Sleepy Baby Method playlist is responsible for me being in the top 2% of Taylor Swift listeners on Spotify this year...

@_Sarah_Hughes_ @wesstreeting Good to hear your take @_Sarah_Hughes_ and appreciate your commitment to supporting that vision for mental health. The amount of time spent on the NHS was shorter than I anticipated, but perhaps indicative of the work to prep for the 10yr plan

The fact is I’m disappointed. We’ve got to wait a bit to see how the budget shakes down for us. We’ve got our best brains on the case and we know colleagues across the MH sector are doing the same. @wesstreeting call us, we’ve got a few things to discuss…

There were many things to appreciate from the #Budget2024. Seeing the first female Chancellor present was inspiring. There were clearly some major commitments to dealing with poverty, equalising the tax burden, spend on education. These will contribute to #mentalhealth…BUT, a 🧵

@jonnym1ller 🙋

We've gradually begun inviting people to test our new iOS app Stateshift — delivering evidence-backed relaxation practices (customized with AI) If you're interested in taking the v1 for a spin, reply to this with 🙋‍♂️ & I'll DM you an invite

@wadddee @PharmRJ Thanks Wade, we’ve been speaking to this clinically / anecdotally for some time - good to have more data points to support it. Good to get England data on this too @TonyAvery1 @keithridge1 @adamgordon1978

@mirandarwolpert @mathewparris3 Well said @mirandarwolpert @Tamsin_J_Ford and others. Mental health science and innovation really matters. Surprising that @mathewparris3 relegates the brain to a second class organ? We have nothing to fear from evidence

@joshuapliu Only ever happened once!

@ushma_17 Oof Hopefully those are rare occurrences

Let’s talk about a Digital Health pilot that failed (and what I learned from it): Many years ago we landed a pilot with a very large, well-known health system. We could already envision the huge rollout that would happen after the pilot. Just one thing: they wanted to run the pilot as a tightly controlled research study with minimal involvement from the vendor (us) and clinical teams. What did this mean? → Initiative led by research coordinators Not clinical champions - who then became only loosely involved in the initiative → Framed to patients as opting-in to a research study As opposed to this being standard of care and patients can choose to opt-out) → We as the vendor were not allowed to run our normal Customer Success and maintenance playbook We could not do regular check-ins, trouble-shooting and advisory services with frontline staff after Go-Live. Basically we couldn’t help navigate challenges the way we normally would. → No motivation to make it successful. The research coordinators felt their job was to implement a protocol strictly, without continuously iterating the process/playbook to improve patient adoption and engagement. Still we hoped everything would work out. Unfortunately, as one of my mentors regularly reminds me: "Hope is not a strategy". You can guess what happened: → Low patient adoption → Clinicians lost interest → Pilot didn’t go anywhere once complete Ultimately Digital Health implementations only work when: → The team leading them actually cares to make it successful (and thus puts in the effort to continuously improve processes) → The vendor (who has the subject matter expertise on the solution) is allowed to put their own effort in to help make it successful Like I always say, Digital Health is not a magic pill… What did I wish we told the health system at the beginning? As tough as this is to say, and even though this might have tanked the deal… I wish I told them that they were setup to fail. That this was not going to work. That we highly, highly advise against this approach. Of course easier said than done… What’s a failed Digital Health pilot you’ve been involved with and why did it fail?

@GregorWell @sogalo Very sorry to hear this sad news. Sending my condolences to you and the whole family, Nigel. Gregory's passion for mental health was so clear, and he will be very deeply missed by many x

Hello this is Nigel @sogalo , Gregor’s brother. It is with great sadness that I am sharing that Gregor died peacefully on Frida. He was an inspirational leader and champion for mental health. Much loved husband, father, grandfather and brother. Our hearts are💔

@doc_namrata @Google Looks awesome! Are you back in London?

One theory - if you're in the other spaces, perhaps your solution works across therapeutic areas? E.g. note taking support for community workers, which isn't specific to mental health

Similarly with this Kings Fund report on NHS spend on mental health (i.e. splitting out that first bucket in the previous graph). Half of the NHS spend is on community and inpatient care. Is tech just less useful there?

I'm looking back at the 5 Year Forward View for Mental Health and this breakdown of spending. I can name a lot of tech companies trying to go for IAPT / Talking Therapies within the first bucket (NHS) but fewer in the other spaces, like social care, benefits. Who am I missing?