Listen Here: iTunes | Spotify | Anchor

Guest Background

Lucia Huang is co-founder and CEO of Osmind, a digital health startup working to maximize innovative treatments to mental health. Osmind provides an electronic health record software (EHR) for providers serving patients with treatment-resistant mental health conditions. Their software and analytical insights help providers optimize care and contribute to research of new diagnostics and therapies. They now serve over 22,000 patients in 135 mental health practices in the U.S. Osmind was founded in early 2020 and is backed by General Catalyst and Y Combinator.

Lucia previously led business at Verge Genomics, an AI-driven neuroscience biotech startup aiming to cure ALS and Parkinson's. She previously invested in innovative healthcare technology companies at Warburg Pincus. Lucia graduated Yale with a B.S. in Chemistry and earned an MBA at Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she was also awarded a Certificate in Public Management and Social Innovation. Lucia is passionate about mental health and has devoted her career to improving healthcare, from life sciences to new technology innovation.

YouTube Clips

For more YouTube Clips of Lucia - checkout our YouTube Channel Here

Links

https://twitter.com/osmindhq
https://www.instagram.com/osmindhealth/
https://www.facebook.com/osmindHQ
https://www.linkedin.com/company/osmind

hello@osmind.org

Show Notes

1:57 - Background on Osmind

5:13 - Current landscape of ketamine / psychedelic clinics

7:08 - Lucia's personal journey with mental health

10:45 - What it's like to receive ketamine treatment, using mood trackers

14:24 - Osmind's partnership with Caretaker, a wireless patient monitor

15:51 - How research and clinical care go hand in hand

18:01 - How psychedelics can be tested in a controlled setting

19:04 - Future of psychedelics - tailored drugs vs commodities

24:03 - How Osmind is building a community for people who are treatment resistant

25:54 - How Lucia's parents have come around to her working in psychedelics

26:48 - Should psychedelics be legal

28:15 - What Lucia is excited about in the psychedelic industry

Transcript

Trey:

Thank you for joining us Lucia.  Since we first connected a couple of weeks ago. you've announced a funding round, so I would love to maybe start with a little bit about that and then just a background on Osmind in general.

Lucia:

Yeah. Cool. Thank you so much for having me, Trey.
I'm really excited about what you're doing and, just as much publicity and information we can share on the subject and the mental health. It's really an awesome initiative. So thank you for having me.

I'm cofounder and CEO of Osmind, we're at digital health, mental health startup focused on, treatment resistant patients and their providers. we're hoping to help maximize access to innovative mental health treatments. And specifically for treatment resistant patients, people who have failed two or more conventional therapies, talk therapy or an anti-depressant or something of that nature.

And in the US it's over 20 million people. A third of people with mental health conditions are deemed the treatment resistant. And that just really speaks to the fact that we don't know what works for the individual and our standard of care is just. Such poor quality.  We haven't had any innovation in depression treatments since the 1980s when SSRIs were invented.

Psychedelics and other types of innovative mental health treatments are completely changing that. At Osmind, we're building software that helps clinicians deliver better care for their patients, for innovative mental health treatments and streamline things like administrative tasks, but also helping to aggregate insights that helps them deliver the best possible care for patients in a more individualized manner.  I cofounded the company at the beginning of this year when I had met my co-founder Jimmy, over a year ago at Stanford, just wrapped up my MBA there a la Zoom graduation. and Jimmy was in med school and we met in a healthcare IT class, and were working on a different project at the time, but stayed in touch after class and realized that. We both had really similar mental health journeys. we're both Asian American grew up in households where it's highly stigmatized. and myself,  have struggled with an eating disorder for almost a decade and had no idea how to resolve it and what to do. And gosh, I wish I had known more about psychedelic medicine treatments at the time.

Through that journey and through sharing our stories, we realized that there's so much out there that can be done around mental health. And we knew so many people who had it. Quite frankly, like worse than us, they had multiple mental health conditions. They were battling and had tried multiple things without things working.

We really wanted to do some things to help people like that and to help bring about innovation in the field that is coming through things like psychedelic medicine. So that's what we've been up to for almost the past year. we launched our software for. Ketamine psychedelic and other treatment resistant mental health based providers about four months ago.

We're now serving over 130 practices in the us covering 20,000 plus patients. So it's been an awesome, exciting journey and something that's given us so much meaning, especially during COVID and, through the process of building the company. Went through Y Combinator over the summer, which is a, an accelerator based out here in Silicon Valley and raised our seed round, from general catalyst, who's invested in some really incredible mental health companies in the past, like mind strong and Sonder mind.

We're really excited to be joining that suite of companies and doing as much as we can to help the patients in mental health that have been suffering the most.

Trey:

Many things to dig into there. And I have a lot of questions, so it sounds like you're servicing, people that are providing alternative treatments, to various mental health issues. And you mentioned, eating disorders, anxiety, depression, you mentioned working with ketamine clinics and other, psychedelic clinics. Can you talk a little bit about what that landscape looks like?

Lucia:

Yeah. So the typical patient journey, for a mental health patient is pretty crazy in the US as you could imagine, most people like will for awhile go an undiagnosed. as there's still a lot of stigma.

There's a lot of access problems. I read a stat that on average, multiple years before someone first seeks help for a mental health condition. And when they do, they typically go to their PCP. So their primary care physician who. is great, probably haven't been trained to help treat mental health conditions.

And so at that point they might start taking a drug or they might start trying therapy. and with the drugs, like for antidepressants, like SSRIs, it usually takes six to 12 weeks to even tell if something is taking effect and That's just like a huge amount of pain and suffering for someone to go through if they're already really feeling down in the dumps. And then this person might, try multiple types of therapies and that's not working. And then at that point, they may, yes, they may be, They've probably seen a psychiatrist at this point and that psychiatrist may then refer them out or they might hear on their own to try psychedelic medicine or tried neuromodulation, like things like TMS and some of these more alternative therapies.

Things like ketamine, FDA approved psychedelic medicine, which is hopefully on its way and, types of brain stimulation. So I mentioned transcranial magnetic stimulation, ECT, which is called, which is electroconvulsive therapy. These are all much more invasive forms or intensive forms of mental health treatments that are typically reserved for patients who have failed multiple lines of other types of treatments, but, have pretty high effectiveness rates, studies have shown, and in the US, ketamine is definitely a really quickly growing field. from what we've seen, at least it's probably doubled in size every year in terms of the number of practices. at least now that we know right now, I think probably 700 or so ketamine practices all around the US and these are standalone clinics, and a lot of them are really excited about FDA approved psychedelic medicine coming down the line. So I think a lot of them are also opening up in anticipation of being able to administer MDMA and psilocybin assisted therapy as well.

Trey:

What was your personal experience there? It sounds like you followed a similar path to what you described, where, not necessarily seeking out help for awhile and then going down the traditional path where people may or may not be as educated about the different solutions that are out there. So what was that journey for you?

Lucia:

So for me it definitely took me a while to seek help and, it's super tough. And I think, a lot of us have good support mechanisms. A lot of us are not so great support mechanisms. And even then it's just so hard to overcome that initial stigma and self realization. and then for me, I had been struggling with an eating disorder for a while. And after many years of just being in denial, like finally decided to go to therapy, which is a really huge step for me. And I'm glad. is now becoming more and more mainstream. and that really helps a lot. I think that we just thinking about my life in different ways and finding purpose in other areas of my life really helped me overcome it, all in all. But I definitely do think that, there are some people where therapy might not be enough and that's. Totally. Okay. that's not anyone's fault.

It might just be the way that we're biologically wired or environmentally affected. And there is going to be a subset of the population with more treatment resistant conditions or more severe mental illness. and again, that's totally okay. And that's just the nature of how our bodies and our brains work.

So I do wish that the time I had known more about, for example, if they're studying, ibogaine for, addictive disorders for things like eating disorders. And, it'd be really interesting to have tried that, but I'm excited about those new therapies presenting hope for things like eating disorders or things like substance use disorders or more general mood disorders.

Trey:

So back to Osmind for a second, as I understand it, you're creating software, electronic health record systems for the clinicians that are offering some of these alternative treatments, ketamine being one of those examples. And you're trying to support them in aggregating data, across patients that are receiving these alternative treatments. As I understand it, these clinics have been around for awhile. What are they currently doing? Why is it not really organized in the way that you envision and how are you hoping that Osmind improves that?

Lucia:

I think a lot of the practices are actually on the newer side too.
so many new practices are popping up in anticipation of FDA approved psychedelic medicine and even things like TMS are only, I think, 15 or 20 years old, so relatively new and the, in the whole lifecycle of healthcare. but yeah, a lot of practices are just using pen and paper or they're using software that's really not well suited for their needs.

So especially with the state patient population, people who are treatment resistant and who might be needing to seek help, over a long period of time, it's really important for the practitioner and for the patient to have the strong bond or to have a ways of communicating and for the practitioner to be able to monitor the patient. and so one unique thing, for example, that our EHR does is that it is integrated with a mood tracker for the patient, an app that patients get to use throughout their treatment and thereafter, and that allows them to fill out, for example, validated questionnaires of how is my depression or my anxiety, based on their diagnosis and then that the physicians or the practitioners get that information.

And that really helps them because Sometimes they don't know when patients need to come in for another ketamine infusion, for example, or they're coming in at inappropriate times. So really tailoring to the individual of, gosh, I'm really not feeling well now it's time for me to see my practitioner. Especially with ketamine, there've been studies that it really helps with acute suicidal ideation. So getting people in at the right time, really important. so that's just one thing that the software does that, a lot of practices now just have no clue in are flying blind and how their patients are doing, throughout a number of treatments.

Trey:

With ketamine specifically, what does that process look as a patient? Do I go in, one time and I take some ketamine and I'm done, or do I go every week? what's a typical protocol that patients go through.

Lucia:

Really good question. there's a number of different ways that practitioners are administering ketamine. And it's actually a pretty interesting, like we're interested in this as a research topic of what protocols are most effective for a given patient based on their medical history or their demographic background, but the common protocols involves differences around the route of administration.

So the two main types of ketamine therapy are - Either a more like ketamine infusion type therapy where it's a therapeutic treatment. A patient is coming in typically six times over about two to three weeks and they get a 40 minute or so infusion and that's shown to help a lot with the acute suicidal ideation.

Typically the patient is then coming in, maybe. every month or every two months after their initial set of six fusions. and so that's yeah, shown to have a very high effectiveness rate. I think some studies put it at about 70% effectiveness rate for that type of protocol. and then the other main type is ketamine assisted psychotherapy, which is typically administered orally or injected intramuscularly.
So this is typically done in conjunction with therapy itself. So because. The onset of the ketamine is not as strong as getting it infused in your body. patients are able to talk through different experiences they've had with therapists, and that's a different yeah. Different types of healing process than just the therapeutic intervention of, IV ketamine, I think.

Yes, jury's still out around which what is most effective. And I think the field overall. Have a lot of different opinions about it. I think some people think that ketamine assisted psychotherapy, might have longer-term effects, where, therapy is actually working at like the root of problems, whereas people on the ketamine IV side believe that like the therapeutic effects of ketamine itself is highly effective.
So lots of research questions that we're interested in and we're actually trying to address through the software too.

Trey:

I see a lot of that debate and for the most part. what you hear is that the latter is more effective, right? the drug alone, isn't solving the problems.
But, with the addition of either integration therapy or, therapy while you're actually being administered, these drugs, seeing a lot more effective results. and I think. companies like Osmind are probably the perfect way to ultimately make that judgment call. certainly if that data is being fed back in some way at an aggregate level, is that something that you guys are actively looking at and have you seen any results from that kind of comparison yet?

Lucia:

It's not something, we have enough data on yet to disclose, but something that we're really interested in and I think it'd be really interesting to see like how it affects the individual. if someone has. even failed a certain subset of drugs, like drugs, AB and C and someone else has failed drugs D,E and F, then maybe they should require different treatments. And maybe if someone had a different sort of diagnosis, like maybe for anxiety, a certain protocol is better, we just don't really have that much data. Overall with mental health, there's just no precise way of treating people. even the way we diagnose people is so subjective.

It's this thing called the DSM five that's published by the medical societies and it's based on symptoms, It's not based on anything. Objective it's based on, I might feel this way certain day, but like my sadness one day is probably very different from your sadness another day. And yeah. I think overall at Osmind, we're really excited about just finding more objective ways to determine what mental health means and how to treat it.

And objective could mean yes to things like what drugs you failed in the past, your medical history or your social background, or even how you interact or use your phone. there are so many interesting ways that we could look at more objective ways of diagnosing and treating people.

Trey:

I think it's a really great point. I believe in the past week I saw that you announced another partnership or a partnership rather with a company called caretaker. Is that right?

Lucia:

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Man you're read up. Great. yeah. Caretaker is a wireless patient monitor. It basically, it's just really neat, like little finger cuffs that attaches through your finger.

So rather than like the clunky blood pressure monitor that most folks use, they've had this really cool technology at tracks, Bluetooth over Bluetooth, the patient's vitals just through that little finger cuffs. And, that is it's really important for clinicians because they get real time monitoring of how patients are
responding to ketamine or to other psychedelic medicine. So super important for how they deliver care and for how they measure safety. but from a research perspective, really interesting too, because we can actually start getting real-time physiological understanding of of ketamine and maybe like the dosage amount effects that maybe there's some correlation between like physiological response and overall treatment efficacy.

I think there are lots of really cool research questions we could ask. but we're excited about that partnership because we basically will have a direct integration from their monitor into our electronic health record. So from not just from a clinical perspective, but from a time perspective, clinicians, aren't going to have to take the physical measurements of vitals and wrap that clunky blood monitor, pressure around a cuff around people.

They can just automatically use the, wireless remote. Monitor and it will get uploaded into our EHR.

Trey:

So with Osmind, there's this EHR component where you're providing software for clinicians and using that data in interesting ways, you mentioned there's also a research component. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Lucia:

Yeah. I think for us, like research definitely bleeds between both, but what the clinician is doing and with even developing new diagnostics and therapies. I think what's so exciting about psychedelic medicine and ketamine is that like the clinicians are the researchers.

It's not people in white coats in labs doing their own thing. And then clinicians doing a totally different thing. So many of our clinicians have or are interested in publishing. So we're really excited about returning some of their clinics, data and insights back to them so they can publish on it.

I think the second component is we're really excited about new therapies being developed, whether it's psychedelic or just psychedelic inspired. and I think a lot of the information that we're collecting and aggregating on a national level, is really useful for that.

So for example, we know very well, a company working on developing a ketamine analog, and they're interested in, we're trying to get these through clinical trials and the ketamine analog now is different than ketamine in that, It basically reduces the hallucinogenic effect, which obviously people have different opinions about that, but could make it easier to commercialize because there are fewer safety requirements, like maybe a big problem with sprovato for example, the, esketamine, is that it requires like a lot of safety monitoring, and patients have to stay in the office and it then becomes pretty expensive. some companies are working on developing analogs to alter the safety profiles and alter the dissociative effects so that it might actually become more affordable for patients in a way. and I know there are different opinions on the effectiveness of that.

And I think jury's out on the research side, but we're excited about using some of our information to inform that type of development. So for example, this company with ketamine analog, if they're running a clinical trial and they're like, gosh, which patients are going to respond best to our ketamine analog?

Like what sorts of backgrounds should we be looking at? Or, what sorts of medical histories, like it's pretty good information that we have, that we may be able to help them, to better develop those drugs.

Trey:

One of the things I've heard with clinical trials with, psychedelics or synthetics, is that it's really difficult to have a control group, right?

This is one of these things where it's pretty obvious whether or not you have a placebo, certainly if there is a sort of disassociative effects, what are you seeing there in terms of the research and new drugs that are being developed? How can that be done effectively without the ability to do, structured clinical trials in the way that they've traditionally been done.

Lucia:

Yeah, I think it's interesting. I think right now, like it seems like, definitely the placebo effect has the opposite effect it with these trials, but. set and setting are really important, so that in more controlled settings there's could be a way to mimic the effects or at least to equalize the baseline, for placebo and for the drug under study.

I'd be really curious to hear how MAPS and these folks do it. But from my understanding is that there's pretty controlled settings where it's not too obvious to the patient on what exactly they're receiving.

Trey:

What do you think the future looks like in terms of, obviously there's some regulatory challenges in terms of getting some of these things passed and approved, but there's also this question of whether or not there's just going to be commoditized, psilocybin as one example versus very particular versions of the drug that these newer drug companies are trying to develop and patent for very specific uses. do you see, there's a world where there's hundreds and hundreds of different, very specific drugs in this space. So there's really four or five that work really well, but people are just applying differently

Lucia:

That's a really interesting question. I think. it's a challenging question too, because we still need to take time to recognize the cultural and historical context for a lot of these therapies, especially yet some more naturally occurring ones that have been used for millennia likely, and I think it is challenging from so many perspectives because of that and because we're, we don't want to be, capitalizing on these therapies that are naturally available, but at the same time, I'm a firm believer of the more, the better, I think it's as much as we can get things onto the market and things to patients that's just going to help them no matter what.

And the fact of the matter is our healthcare system is set up to encourage novel IP. And because psilocybin is naturally occurring. it's hard to get novel IP. So I think we have to recognize the realities of our healthcare system and that. We have to work with that instead of trying to fight it.

So that's one thing that we believe pretty strongly. And secondly, I think there are benefits from, like you said, having these tailored individualized treatments. Like some people might not like disassociation, I think for example, They don't recommend ketamine to people with psychotic issues.

So for example, if they've experienced schizophrenia and maybe there's a way to improve molecules to open it up to that patient population, or maybe there's a way to shorten the effect of the hallucination so that it can be more economically feasible rather than MDMA where, it's so super excited for it, but it's a very long protocol. The patient has to stay there. I think they have to stay overnight as well. And not only has the therapist has. Have to be a therapist that they have to be like an Airbnb hosts too, So it's pretty sounding like economically, like how is we need to think of ways to make it sustainable.

And I think it's exciting that there are more therapies that are coming online that. But potentially at least give that option. And I think that's what is most important that there are options. And to our point earlier about everyone being so individualized in our diagnostic criteria being completely broken, if we can totally personalize to just down to the individual, down to their backgrounds, their genetics, their social determinants. there are so many ways that we can hopefully personalize and I think it's a really interesting parallel is with cancer, cancer is experienced like a huge revolution in the last. Decade. obviously there's still a lot to be done and a lot of people still suffer from cancer, but I think the death rate in the last 25 years or so has dropped by 25%, something like pretty significant, where all there is, areas of healthcare are just getting worse and worse, like mental health.
So a big reason for that is they're starting to do more personalized therapies where they take your tumor and they sequence it and then they can figure out exactly what drug works best for your tumor type. and that's something where I see like mental health going. Like it shouldn't just be like broad strokes of you can just try this random anti-depressant and hopefully it works for you.

We really should be able to narrow things down more objectively, and I hope psychedelic medicine gets there where there is a huge array of options based on the individual.

Trey:

It sounds like what you're describing with cancer is that what you would say Flatiron health has done to help, improve cancer treatment. And you're hoping to do with Osmind for mental health

Lucia:

Yeah. I think that's a really good analogy. And, we've definitely been compared to them quite a bit. We really want to be able to help bring what's the term precision medicine or precision health to mental health patients, because  it's just right now, it's not working.

We don't even know if therapy or a drug, if that's the first step and we don't know which drug, and then we don't know what else next after that. we just don't know enough.

Trey:

You mentioned at the top of the episode,  was it 20 million people? Is that in the US are treatment resistant? And I imagine that, there's treatment resistant, but there's also people for which treatment is working, but maybe not as effectively. So that number is likely even higher.

Lucia:

That's a really good point. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's the whole issue of are we ever actually going to cure something, Like right now the standard of care is you take a pill, every day for the rest of your life. And as mentioned with cancer, like there are so many new therapies like car T or like gene therapies or like new actually curative ways of. Looking at disease and I'm excited for psychedelic medicine to have that potential.

I think ketamine is already a huge improvement as you might come in for a maintenance infusion, every month for a bit longer after your initial six, and MDMA, hopefully it's like you come in the two times it requires, and then, you feel so much better. So I think just shortening the chronic nature of treating is going to be really important for both the patient and economically for our healthcare system.

Trey:  

One of the challenges right now is certainly the cost of some of these treatments, And hopefully that comes down over time, as more and more, drugs are created and approved and therapies, become more robust with, with the help of, companies like Osmind. I imagine, one of the things I really like about what you're doing is, not everyone necessarily has access to this treatment from a cost perspective or even a location perspective, There's not a ketamine clinic in every town in the country, but you've created this online community, for people with treatment resistant, mental health issues. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Lucia:  

Yeah, we're really happy to have our online community. it's just, it's at members.osmind.org And it's open to it for anyone to use. not just ketamine patients, although it is primarily composed of folks who were interested in ketamine and alternative mental health treatments.

But we actually just launched it during COVID. we were building our software and we like basically took a pause and we're like, wow, COVID is just getting out of control. This was like right in mid-March when shit was hitting the fan and we launched the community and, blasted it to like Reddit and Facebook and got a bunch of clinics to publicize it.

And, it's been really great. Yeah. So we've got, hundreds, if not thousands of patients on there who asked a bunch of questions, like I'm looking at it now. I think the first question is what do you listen to, or watch during your ketamine infusion? And the next one is about psychedelic advocacy and how to get involved.
So just, yeah, a fun place where people can hopefully find support. it's really still so stigmatized. I live in the Bay area where I'm, for better or for worse, not really thinking about things like that, but we talked to people who live in Arkansas or, Missouri and, just places other than, the more liberal coastal areas where like it is so stigmatized still, and people are embarrassed to tell their family about it. And we just wanted to provide somewhere for folks to get help and ask people questions that they might be afraid of asking out loud.

Trey:

So to that point, you mentioned early on as well that you grew up, where it might've been a bit stigmatized to talk about mental health. how has that changed now?  what does your family think about this new company that you're running?

Lucia:

They're pretty stoked. Yeah. I think they've come around to it a lot. it's funny. My mom will send me like random articles about mushrooms and I'm like, mom, it's 5:00 AM. Like the first thing you do when you wake up is read about mushrooms.
I love it. She's a really stoked about it. And this is coming from my parents immigrated from China many decades ago, so they definitely didn't have anything related to drugs growing up. so I think it's great. I think it's really exciting. And I think it's. Really interesting, even in the U S that there's a convergence of the older generation that might've been around for the sixties and seventies, and then this younger generation.

That's so exciting and things are coming together in a place where I think there's enough momentum to really change, both stigma and access.

Trey:

Where do you fall on a line of the legality or what you think it should be? It's one of these controversial things where, there's decriminalization, there's complete legality. There's legality in therapeutic settings. What do you think is the right path forward there?

Lucia:

I personally am like a big fan of just completely legalizing it. I think just given the cultural and historic context of these things probably shouldn't even have been made illegal in the first place.

It was from my understanding was very political related to the Vietnam war and related to, politicians at the time wanting to exert control over, over a mainstream society. So I think there's, yeah, a lot of deep and troubling history there. And. I think from other perspectives, like there are case studies of other countries that have at least decriminalized drugs, which is Portugal and has seen a lot of their, drug overdose rates, for example, or crime rates go down.

So yeah, I think there are definitely a lot of benefits to legalizing these therapies, especially because they have relatively. Positive safety profiles. so I think so. Yeah, so many reasons from historical political economics, that makes sense for it to be legal, but yeah, at the same time, the way things are going now, it's going through the American medical system.

So I think we have to dual-track it and hope that we can get measures out there and get votes in the ballot to legalize them. But we can't bank on that happening. So we also need to make sure that we can shuttle them through the American healthcare system and the FDA.

Trey:

In terms of the  entrepreneurial movement that has been getting a lot of steam within this space in the last couple of years, you have the drug companies, you have clinics, you have software companies like yourself. there's even music companies. What are you most excited about? Are there other companies in the space that you're watching pretty closely and eager to see?

Lucia:

Yeah, gosh. Oh man. I'm just excited. I'm really excited about everyone. I think it's so interesting because there's been such a convergence of a lot of these.

And I think when you look at traditional health care, everything is very siloed. Like you've got biotech and one place you've got software in one place is that clinics. And none of them really is blend, but with. Yeah, but, in psychedelics it seems like there's so much mixing and so much innovation that it makes sense for a clinic to be doing research and to be developing its own drugs and potentially to be building its own software.

And we're definitely staying in the software and research area, but it's cool to see other companies with that approach. I think where folks can really differentiate is like solving the infrastructure pain points that we're going to have. So we have, a partnership that I guess we're officially announcing later on with, a very early stage company called Journey. They're based in New York, but they're going to be, in-person. Practice for ketamine practitioners who are just starting out. So the pain point that they identified from an infrastructure perspective was there are so many therapists and practitioners interested in administering psychedelic medicines, but most States in the US require a prescribing physician to be able to get those medicines.

But like, how do they do that? Like, how are they going to find an MD? It's just going to hand them ketamine for their patients. And so journey aims to connect those two parties. they have an ability for new practices. We're getting off the ground to rent space. And to basically get access to a prescribing, MD for their ketamine and to rent other types of resources, including the Osmind EHR, to really help them get off the ground.

So I think it's companies like that are solving like the fundamental, maybe not as sexy, but like infrastructure. Like we need to lay the groundwork type problems that are really interesting for us. And I think that's, yeah. W what we're excited about doing too, is weighing the data infrastructure to collect all this information and to help advance. Both practice and research.

Trey:

That's super exciting. that's a cool concept. It makes a lot of sense. What's next for Osmind, obviously you're still in the early stages here. Just getting started. What are you most excited about? maybe over the next year or so?

Lucia:

Yeah. Oh man. So much. yeah, we just raised our seed round about a month ago.
So I'm first and foremost, excited to be focusing on company building and, putting our heads back down a little bit, but we're really excited to just continue to scale our software as much as possible. we are really fortunate to be working with so many folks around the U S and we just want to hit the gas on that and really be the leading software provider for anyone who's interested in.

Treatment resistant mental health types of modalities. and so that means, yeah, expanding our presence in ketamine and really, making headway and TMS and other areas of general psychiatry. but also building the team and building somewhere that's like really fun and amazing to work. yeah, I think that's something that's really important to me personally. having worked in a variety of organizations in the past, some that were more fun or less fun to work with is really building a place where especially now, like people actually look forward to getting on zoom or to going into the office. We do have an office if we're lucky.

So we're really focused on that and I think focus on okay, continuing to see where the research goes with psychedelic medicine and hopefully helping some of our partners. we're working with some pharma companies, in some, some work on the insurance side, as I mentioned. So hopefully in a year we can say that we told medicare that they should cover ketamine, they listened to us. So I hope I get to tell you that in 365 days, and hopefully we can also say that helps to advance the clinical trials for a new psychedelic therapy as well.

Trey:

So many exciting things, I appreciate everything you're doing. I'm definitely going to be cheering for you. Thank you so much for sharing all this is there anything else you'd like to maybe close with and share and let everyone know certainly where they can find more about you and Osmind.

Lucia:

Yeah, no, I just want to thank you again for doing this. I think.
We're at such a crucial turning point right now for mental health. And I think in the same way, I mentioned that cancer underwent this revolution over the last decade. Like I think we were at that point with we're about to hit that with mental health and we're going to have so many exciting new therapies, so much technology and innovation with things like visual phenotyping and network neuroscience.

And finally, hopefully in 10 years, do we'll be able to say that we actually understand like, What goes on in your brain when you have depression. So I'm really excited that you're bringing to light a lot of the companies and organizations, furthering that cause. And,  if folks want to learn more about Osmind, we're at Osmind.org, and Osmind is O S M I N D and yeah, you'll always feel free to reach out and you can reach us at email at, hello at Osmind.org.

Trey:

Thank you so much Lucia.

Lucia:

Thanks.

__________________

Follow us on Twitter: @mindthingsgo

Subscribe to our newsletter

Follow us on YouTube