di , 10/08/2021

Two weeks ago, Healthware Labs launched the inaugural issue of Digital Health News Digest – a collection of the biggest digital health news over the last two months.
Now the Edtorial Team of Healthware is taking a closer look at the trends behind this news with Gerry Chillè, Partner – Head of Digital Therapeutics at Healthware Group. In particular, the conversation was built around the mental and behavioral health, since they were the dominant in this edition of the Digest.

Gerry Chillè

Gerry Chillè Partner – Head of Digital Therapeutics at Healthware Group

Born and raised in Italy, then professionally baked in the US, Gerry Chillè is a unique multi-cultural individual with a polymorphous approach to problem solving and a true out-of-the-box thinker thanks to his extensive creative, technical and strategic background.
Gerry launched Healthware Labs in NYC to advance Healthware’s reach in the US innovation ecosystem and provide an Open Innovation platform for pharma clients to design and launch digital health Proof of Concepts in partnership with startups.
Today Gerry is the General Partner and Managing Director of the Digital Therapeutics division at Healthware Group, in charge of an evolving DTx pipeline. He holds a BFA degree from the State University of New York, and MBA credits at the University of Phoenix.

Gerry, how would you assess the current digital health landscape given the latest news?

Observing the news from the Digest, we can definitely find some important themes behind the latest happenings in digital health. […] These types of mental health support tools are critical, especially in the Covid and post-Covid times, because the incidence of mental health distress has become more and more prevalent across the world. […] Almost a year ago as a part of a panel at Frontiers Health Global Conference we had a conversation with Alison Darcy, Founder and President at earlier mentioned Woebot Health (you can read the takeaways from this panel discussion in the Frontiers Health Booklet – editorial note). And we have seen that their company has grown a lot since then: $90M raised by Woebot Health in July 2021 is a very illustrative milestone. The same panel featured other notable digital menthal health companies such as Wysa, Silvercloud and Happify all of whom have had tremendous growth and investments in the last year.[…]

I would add that there are two other segments of mental health that have become more and more visible: solutions focusing on helping children and corporate solutions created for the benefit of employees under new work-related stress. What would be your insights around these two areas?

Children’s mental health is becoming a critical topic because their social interaction has become limited by lockdowns and remote learning. Social interactions with peers are, however, especially critical to the emotional development of children or adolescents. One of the concerns here is that the pandemic itself has created a strong dependance on digital tools and gadgets, which have resulted in an even bigger social bubble around young people. Hence, the question here is how do we integrate these tools in a proper way? […]

If you’re keen to learn more, you can read the full interview at www.healthwaregroup.com/blog