Author | Susan
Edit | Shi Yaqiong
Since the epidemic, the pace of investment in the mental health track has indeed been different. Even, 2021 has an outlet.
Catalyzed by the logic of "the epidemic has led to the rise of public psychological pressure", since the second half of 2020, the pace of the mental health track has accelerated significantly. The number of enterprises that began to receive continuous financing gradually increased, and investors observed more positive clues, and bets and increases one after another.
In 2021, the financing of the domestic mental health track is slightly higher than the previous heat, with 25 financing incidents throughout the year, involving 20 companies, and a number of head companies entering the B and C rounds.
List of 2021 Mental Health Track Financings
In the past, investors did not shoot, mainly believing that in the case of low penetration rate on the demand side and underdeveloped supply side, the inflection point of the industry has not yet arrived, and there are other good consumer medical tracks to choose from.
Mental health track companies often fall into the embarrassment of "early financing round trip", which reflects the growth problems of the invested companies, and there are a few who have not fallen on the road. Even recently, the legal entity of the industry's leading psychological counselor service tool "Learning Cases" "Heart Talk Companion" filed for bankruptcy at the end of October 2021, and the supply-side psychological counselors themselves are not enough to live and really can't come to other people's business.
At the same time, compared with the United States, the current domestic regulatory policies on individual segments of mental health are not perfect. For example, the state's regulatory system for psychological consulting services, digital therapy and other subdivisions does not match its pan-medical health positioning, and it is difficult to eliminate the risk of subsequent regulatory changes.
However, in this industry where supply factors are scarce, there are also investors who give priority to the main players who have been put into construction in the whole chain of elements, especially the supply side and digital means, and the precipitation of data assets, and patiently wait for the inflection point to come.
There are also investors looking for new solutions to solve the pain points of the industry, through new business models and technologies to actively solve the penetration problem, so in 2021 digital therapy and AI+ solutions rise; or to find lighter products and services, to tap the huge market of shallow emotional demand.
01 Industry Atlas
After the preliminary collation of 36Kr, the industrial chain of the domestic mental health track is currently as follows:
Mental health track industry chain
When trying to divide different enterprises into industrial chains, 36Kr saw that the business of many enterprises actually had multiple industrial chain nodes. In the following, if a player has a level of importance for multiple realms, we will divide them into multiple realms.
02 Industry Segmentation Solve the pain point of supply: spiritual psychological services
The medical outcomes of psychotherapy are highly measurable. For pathological psychosocial problems such as moderate depression or above, patients can regain good social function and quality of life by taking appropriate drugs and cooperating with auxiliary means. The price of therapeutic drugs is not high, and many cities in China have included a wide spectrum of psychiatric drugs into the scope of medical insurance, as long as they can access diagnosis and treatment resources, patients' problems can be treated.
According to the "2020 Mental Health Internet Insight Report", the National Health Commission released data in May 2018 showing that 17.5% of the country's 1.3 billion people had mental health problems in 2017, and the Healthy China Action (2019-2030) disclosed in July 2019 that depression and anxiety patients accounted for 2.10% and 4.98% of China's population, respectively. Industry players and investors have told 36Kr that there are only about 45,000 practicing physicians in the department of psychiatry in China, and medical resources are concentrated in provincial and prefecture-level cities, but 36Kr has not found the public data.
The highly insufficient supply side, the separation of supply and demand, and the just demand of the demand side make the spiritual and psychological Internet service platform have greater value. Serious medical care involves scarce specialist resources, and some players are involved in the drug supply chain, with the highest barriers.
According to the relevant national policies, telemedicine and online medical treatment can not conduct the first diagnosis of patients, that is, they must not diagnose the disease, prescribe, prescribe medication and other information. Telemedicine and online medical treatment can only be followed up, received, followed up, etc., and the relevant behaviors must follow the first doctor's instructions.
Patients can conduct preliminary triage, online consultation, follow-up consultation and prescription, drug distribution, and out-of-hospital rehabilitation management through the Internet service platform, and the platform generally needs to obtain an Internet medical hospital license and an Internet drug information service license. The head enterprises mainly include "Good Mood", "Zhaoyang Doctor", and AI SaaS service providers that extend the industrial chain upwards, such as "Xiao Understand Health". We will also include "Understanding Health" in other content subsections.
In addition, there are vertical service institutions and private psychiatric hospitals/medical institutions. Among them, vertical players mainly focus on the field of childhood autism (autism), including "Rice and Millet", which took the lead in entering the C round in the mental health track, "Peking University Medical Brain Health", "Enqi Ingcare", "Alsolife" and so on, relying on the resources of the Six Hospitals of Beijing.
Investment events are more concentrated in children's autism (autism) related institutions, mainly due to the high proportion of pseudo-autism, as long as early intervention is carried out at a young age, children with pseudo-autism can be recovered. Clear treatment plans, parents' just needs, and the lack of domestic rehabilitation institutions make the investment prospects in this field relatively clear.
It is worth noting that rehabilitation therapy for autism (autism) has its own structured characteristics. In the process of service, a higher proportion of rehabilitation services in some institutions are driven by digital software and also have the characteristics of digital therapy. For example, "Yibaikang" also exports smart SaaS business to third-party rehabilitation institutions, so we will also classify it into the subsection of digital therapy.
Compared with the above-mentioned Internet service platform, the proportion of self-owned service teams of professional vertical service institutions will be larger, and at the same time, they will also invest in the talent supply chain to create their own vocational training system; there are online remote intervention courses and remote guidance, and rehabilitation centers have been successively laid out offline to provide a better rehabilitation service experience.
List of enterprises in the field of spiritual psychology segmentation
Outlet: Digital therapy + psychological AI
Frequent financing of digital therapy and psychological AI is the focus of attention on the mental health track in 2021. The high shortage of psychiatric medical resources and the supply side of psychological consulting services has made digital means a solution for many players.
Since it is primarily driven by software, the service essence of digital therapy is SaaS. The basic idea for players in this section is to put digital therapy at the heart of the solution.
Citing the chinese Digital Therapy White Paper 2.0, digital therapy can be seen as the "digital active ingredient" responsible for the benefits of clinical treatment. Digital therapy in the field of psychosociality has long been proven effective abroad, and the functions that can be achieved include screening and evaluation and intervention treatment.
However, using the same methodology does not mean that domestic players can get the same effect, and they need their own technology and data. For example, digital intervention therapy needs to build a patient's behavior curve through a large amount of data to design effective intervention treatment content; in the process of digital interaction with patients, how to choose content tools and how to design interaction will have a significant impact on the final efficacy.
The developed digital therapy needs to meet the criteria of forensic medicine, that is, to obtain better clinical trial results under a sufficient, random sample. With reliable clinical trial results, players can apply to the FOOD and Drug Administration for registration of medical device certification.
At present, the digital therapy developed by domestic players covers the indications including neurological problems such as children's ADHD and autism, addiction problems such as drug rehabilitation, mental and psychological problems such as PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), depression, anxiety, and insomnia.
In order to make the entire digital solution more fluent and precise, in addition to the "digital active ingredient" digital therapy responsible for the benefits of clinical treatment, it is also necessary to have a "digital adjuvant" AI to ensure that the efficacy of digital therapy can be smoothly exerted.
AI mainly penetrates into the two key links of "user state recognition" and "continuous interaction". AI first accurately triages the user's learning state and the user's emotional state during the treatment process. Depending on the identification results, the appropriate strategy and content are selected in multiple rounds of interaction, and the interactive content may even involve multiple different therapies to form an optimal solution for the user. At the same time, it is also necessary to give users good emotional support and companionship.
Migrating and using AI in different industry groups may also require reasonable modification of the knowledge graph of AI; migration between adults and adolescents involves retraining models.
Different digital therapy and psychological AI companies have obvious differences in the proportion of digital therapy and AI functions in their solutions. According to the public information and independent interviews of 36Kr, these companies have also clearly demonstrated different goals: some refer to serious medical treatment, some target shallow preventive needs; some are independent treatment, some are clearly assisted; some have less natural language interaction, and some require AI to be more human-like.
For different indications, in different scenarios, as a drug, or as a vaccine. This will affect different players to invest different resources in digital therapy, natural language processing technology, spiritual and psychological business scenario understanding and other links.
Digital therapy + artificial intelligence natural language processing technology + mental psychology business insights, this is a very complex solution, but it may also be the solution with the highest penetration rate in the mental health track in the future. However, regulatory policy changes in this segment require sustained attention.
List of companies in the digital therapy + AI segment
G-side, B-side mainstream solutions: SaaS and SaaS+ services
Compared with the C-end, the willingness of the G-end and B-end to pay for mental health services is relatively strong.
Based on the psychological intervention needs of officers and soldiers, juveniles, inmates, social workers and other groups, the government, the military, the judiciary, schools, and communities are all scenes where domestic mental health services have landed earlier. Foreign companies are the customer groups that receive psychological services relatively early on the B-side, but the penetration rate of the domestic B-end has still risen slowly for many years.
SaaS and SaaS+ services are the main forms of players to get the G-side and B-end in the past. Unlike the players in the previous section, the players in this section do not use digital therapy + AI as the main content of SaaS. These players mainly sell integrated digital systems such as psychological assessment, psychological data analysis, psychological education, and remote consulting services to the G-end and B-end, or match psychological consulting services or psycho-educational courses, as well as help customers set up psychological counseling rooms/ psychological counseling rooms and other conventional scenarios.
Depending on the player's endowment, the proportion of SaaS and human services in the business will vary greatly, and the technical threshold and complexity of SaaS will also be different. This group of players will also directly face the high-dimensional competition brought about by digital therapy + AI players.
List of SaaS+ service segments
In addition, the industry also has small B-side SaaS opportunities. According to the data of Tianyancha, there are more than 8,000 psychological counseling institutions in China, of which a high proportion are still traditional offline counseling institutions.
These institutions have a limited customer base and service radius, and there is a need to shift to online operations, but their ability to build online business is low, and they can usually only build a portal or public account to receive orders. Therefore, there are also SaaS players who target this vertical field to provide SaaS for small B-ends, and the module content includes content sections such as assessments, articles, courses, and modules such as consultation appointment docking.
These can indeed meet the basic needs of small psychological counseling institutions. The demand is standardized and the number of potential customers is also large, but Know is simple, the barriers are low, and the customers' own life is precarious. The industry's leading psychological counseling platform One Psychology launched the "Pangu System", and the above-mentioned "Spread Wings Plan" launched by the heart-talking companion who has filed for bankruptcy are all small B SaaS at the forefront of the industry, of which "Pangu" does not need to be paid, mainly as a part of the strategic layout of the one psychological supply chain, but the entry into the consulting institutions needs to be screened.
In addition, the aforementioned B SaaS Haotu Technology also has its small B SaaS business, and the marketing SaaS company Meixin Digital also has a solution specifically for this field.
List of small B-side SaaS enterprises
The public is most familiar with: psychological counseling platform
Psychological counseling institutions are the largest number of formats in the mental health track, and there are countless psychological counseling platforms mediated by the Internet. It is very simple to organize this form of business, but it is necessary to form a positive cycle of consultant supply and traffic, and to make the business bigger, and the threshold is not low. The Internet head platform has "One Psychology", "Simple Psychology", "One Point Spirit", and "Seeing Psychology", the first three of which have entered the B round of financing.
After running out, at the flow end, the head mechanism has a self-reinforcing effect. Due to the relatively low level of public trust in psychological counseling services, people recognize brands and buyer reviews. Just as we will be on Ctrip to see hotel reviews, a large number of user evaluation data will form a self-reinforcing data asset, win users' traffic, trust, and ultimately prompt users to try. More user data also provides the basis for the digital operation of head institutions and forms a moat.
On the business side, although the systematic investment of One Psychology, Simple Psychology and One Point Spirit are different in each link, they are basically extensions of the whole industry chain: C-end psychological consulting services, B-end EAP (Employee Assistance Programme), shallow emotional needs business, counselor vocational training, digital means and even digital intervention as auxiliary diagnosis and treatment methods.
The Internet psychological counseling industry still has pain points such as price center, supply side shortage, and insufficient standardization, and the head institutions that have existing infrastructure and actively solve problems are certainly unstoppable, but in this growing industry environment, innovative solutions may still tear out a cake.
List of enterprises in the subdivision field of the Internet psychological counseling platform
Morde Splash: Vocational Training for Counselors
Practitioners told 36Kr that for a long time, the people who raised the psychological counseling industry were not visitors, but people who were interested in psychological counseling and wanted to use it as a profession. Psychological counseling vocational training has blossomed everywhere and cut leeks everywhere.
Since only one exam is far from reaching the level of practice, the national psychological counselor qualification was cancelled in 2017, and industry associations and training institutions can now issue training certificates to trainees. The psychological counseling industry does not have an authoritative vocational basic training system and infrastructure, and the training and supervision infrastructure is mainly invested and built by the head psychological counseling platform players and psychological counseling training institutions, which is relatively fragmented.
In addition to listening to theory and listening to experience, the vocational training of psychological counseling is more important than the opportunity to personally participate in actual combat and to have low-cost access to good supervision resources. Therefore, training institutions that do not provide internship opportunities are in vain.
Moreover, in the absence of a notary system in the industry, the cumulative number of consultation hours, training and supervision between different entities of practitioners lacks credible circulation certificates. At present, several leading Internet platforms will recognize each other as consultants to accumulate consulting hours on different platforms.
That, of course, is to choose him. In the head institution, there may be inexpensive group supervision opportunities and internship opportunities brought about by sufficient traffic, and the accumulated practical experience will be recognized. While the head supply chain facilities are limited, the trend is here. As head agencies grow larger, training institutions that are difficult to provide internship opportunities become less and less competitive.
List of enterprises in the field of psychological counseling vocational training segment
Xiao Qixing: Healthy lifestyle, mutual aid community products
Not all solutions require a serious, bitter vendetta. The relaxed and warm self-help/mutual help method can also manage the stressful depression and help users through the low tide period, which is very important for preventing the escalation of emotional problems.
Among the lightweight solutions, the mindfulness meditation track is the hottest, and the American mindfulness meditation companies Headspace and Calm have reached unicorn valuation levels. The self-service products of mindfulness meditation not only overcome the common problems of standardization and insufficient supply in the mental health track, but also carry the logic of "consumption upgrading".
Related products also have the consciousness of consumer goods, strive for traffic, product differentiation and user repurchase rate, seriously manage content and brand stories, and export systematic brand personality to the outside world; operate communities and communities, and increase user retention.
Positive psychology community products are another lightweight solution. "Let people in the same situation accompany and cheer together" is the core idea of the positive psychological community product. The experience spent together allows users to have an emotional connection to the community and produce considerable user retention. However, the threshold for product construction is not high, the PMF (Product Market Fit) iteration cost is low, and the number of users and user activity can make the first-mover player have a self-reinforcing first-mover advantage in traffic acquisition, user experience and operating costs, which may need to be observed.
List of companies in shallow demand segments
Smart hardware opens up new imaginations
In addition to drugs, psycho-emotional health products actually allow people to receive useful information in the service process - whether it is digital intervention content, psychological counseling services, mental health courses, music therapy, mindfulness therapy, etc., which naturally have content attributes. As a result, there is an opportunity to combine content and smart hardware.
From public information, Yang Meng, the founder of Anker Innovation, invested in Heartly Lab as an individual investor; according to 36Kr, Huawei's sports health business has negotiated cooperation opportunities with the head of the Internet psychological consulting agency for smart wear business. We should expect more consumer electronics to seek cross-border collaboration on mental health in the future.
In addition, in the process of industry interviews conducted by 36Kr, many industry insiders invariably said that the psychotherapy scene and psychological counseling scene really provided too suitable soil for VR. "Mindscape Technology", which we classify into the digital therapy subsection, is already using VR technology for psychotherapy. This directly opened up our new imagination.
Finally, 36Kr also sorted out individual companies that independently developed mental health hardware, but they needed to be re-observed in terms of PMF.
List of businesses in the mental health hardware segment