October 14, 2015
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
Burlingame, Calif.-based Lyra Health announced today that it had closed on a Series A financing round worth $35 million.
The Series A round was led by Greylock Partners and existing investor Venrock. It was joined by existing investor Castlight Health and new investors Providence Health & Services, Breyer Capital and Origin Capital Management.
Lyra was founded in June by David Ebersman, former chief financial officer at Facebook and Genentech . Lyra provides digital analytics and screening tools to help identify people who can benefit from mental health care. Its system is designed to match patients to appropriate healthcare providers and treatments, then guide them through the mental health system. The customers aren’t meant to be patients, but providers, insurers and employers.
Its initial focus is on depression, anxiety and substance abuse. Ebersman indicated in a Forbes that leaving Facebook to found Lyra Health was inspired by a personal experience. “It showed how magical it can be to find the right care,” he said. “I was passionate about developing technology in the hope of helping people suffering from mental health.”
“It’s like a data site,” said Dena Bravata, Lyra’s chief medical officer and co-founder to BizJournal. She points out that the best treatment for a patient might be “cognitive behavioral therapy” from a computer, a drug, or an appointment with a psychologist or psychiatrist.
The company’s technology will be made available in early 2016 to a few large employers and health plans. It expects to expand in 2017.
A fairly significant challenge facing the company is whether patients will be willing to let their employers or insurers know they have a mental health issue or drug problem. There is also some questions how comfortable doctors might be about digitizing and uploading mental health records to a cloud-based data storage system, even though Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. have already developed medical services based in the cloud.
“An alarming number of patients referred for mental health care aren’t able to make an initial appointment,” said Rod Hochman, president of Providence Health & Services in a statement. “We know there are effective treatments that can help, but for too long the system hasn’t been equipped to connect them to the care they need. We’re determined to change that by working with Lyra Health. We are excited about our investment in the company.”
In June, shortly after announcing the launch of the company, Lyra announced a strategic alliance with San Francisco-based Castlight Health, Inc. Castlight calls itself an Enterprise Healthcare Management company, which offers a software platform, the Castlight Enterprise Healthcare Cloud, that helps employers understand and manage their healthcare investments.
Castlight’s most recent service offering was Castlight Elevate, an extension of its EHM platform, “which enables employees to research behavioral health services, make educated treatment choices, and commence care.”
“Everybody knows someone touched by a behavioral health issue — such as depression, anxiety, and substance abuse — and too often those suffering are undiagnosed or untreated,” said Ebersman in a statement in June. “With this partnership, we will be able to leverage Castlight’s platform for distribution capabilities to accelerate the introduction of our technology-enabled service to some of the country’s largest employers.”
