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Top Mental Health Business Ideas for Post-Pandemic US Healthcare Market

Quick Summary: Things are different now. People now more often get caught discussing mental health with their colleagues, friends, families and communities. And on the brighter side, the awareness around mental health is ever-increasing. But the question is, are you ready to find opportunities from the pandemic-fueled mental health awareness and convert it into a real business? If you have a serious plan of starting a mental health startup, let us share some of the fresh mental health business ideas for the post-pandemic world.

What are the clinical roles of mental health apps?

Technology has evolved so greatly that it is now capable of assisting patients in both primary care and secondary care. And mobile apps are the most ‘practical’ piece of technology that is most accessible too!

The following is how a mental health app delivers clinical value to the patients or helps patients to deal with their mental health crisis.

Easy access to therapists:

Using mental health apps, patients can seamlessly book appointments with available therapists, have a virtual call, share problems, receive care with ePrescription and make payments. Patients can also either chat or voice call with a therapist for a quick solution. Enhanced accessibility to therapists results in early detection and quality outcome.

Goal tracking:

Mental health apps are equipped with a feature that enables patients to set a goal and take small steps every day to achieve that goal. The app inspires users to accomplish tasks every day which eventually leads users to a state where they no longer find themselves in a mental health crisis.

A digital diary:

Patient-reported data is crucial for providers to assess whether the current care plan is working or not and what can be done next to recover patients faster. Using the mobile app, patients can record their clinical and wellness data in a more organized way and can anytime share it with their care teams. These clinical and wellness data include vital body signs, mood, sleep patterns, food habits, etc.

A personal coach:

All advanced mental health apps are armed with chabot features that users can utilize to find instant help anytime from anywhere. The chatbot works on AI and ML technologies and can easily understand what the user is asking. It then delivers the accurate answer within seconds. It is like having a personal coach in your mobile app that answers every question related to mental health!

There are many other ways a mental health app can prove itself as the most easily accessible and clinically-proven solution to mental health challenges and that’s why it is a very fruitful business opportunity to start a mobile app-based mental health startup.

Different types of mental health apps you can consider building for your mental health startup

Mental health challenges come in a variety of flavours, and so do the mental health mobile apps. However, all types of mental health apps serve a similar purpose – help patients to deal with the tough time they are going through and achieve the highest level of mental wellness.

The following are the top types of mental health apps that are most likely to be the first choice of users in the post-pandemic market.

mental health app screen
Source: https://dribbble.com/shots/15582319-Meditation-App

1) Teleconsultation app:

Such a type of mental health app serves a very common but very crucial purpose. It makes mental health treatment more rapid, affordable and convenient for both patients and providers. By using it, patients and providers can connect to each other virtually and in a secure way. The best thing about the teleconsultation app is that it is very easy to build and maintain. However, considering the market competition, it is advisable to invest in more advanced features or a super app version of the teleconsultation app which caters to the multiple needs of the patients.

2) Outcome-driven monitoring and tracking app:

Such a type of mental health app is more focused on self-care. Based on the goal set by the users, it helps users to achieve that goal by providing engaging activities every day. It also facilitates users to track their progress toward goals and monitor where he/she is winning or losing.

3) Meditation apps:

Meditation apps are designed and built with a single purpose of calming the restless mind of users as every common mental health illness such as depression and anxiety is linked to a restless mind. To calm users’ restless minds, the meditation apps leverage soothing music and the fusion of ancient and modern meditation practices. In addition to calming restless minds, the meditation apps can also help users reduce negative thoughts, sleep better, and understand their feelings in a better way.

4) Chatbot-based coaching app:

It is not feasible for patients to always remain connected to the care team or therapists. But a chatbot-based coaching app fills that gap. It acts as a personal coach for the patients and solves every single doubt of the patients by answering any question based on data and patient profiles. Such a type of app also delivers a very interesting user experience to the patients as it feels like having a conversation with a real therapist.

5) Age-group specific mental health apps:

Seniors and university students have different sets of mental health challenges. Similarly, women in their 20s and women in their menopause phase also have different mental health challenges. Thus, to address specific mental health challenges of specific age groups and gender, you can consider building a specific app that is more likely to succeed than a general-purpose mental health app as it targets the exact requirements of the exact user groups and delivers better clinical value.

Top mental health business ideas to dominate the post-pandemic US healthcare market

There are multiple unique and less-explored mental health startup possibilities out there in the North American market. The following are our hand-picked ones.

1) AI & ML for mental health diagnosis:

Needless to say, that accurate diagnosis leads to quicker recovery and quality outcomes. However, providers very often lack all crucial information that is required for the accurate diagnosis of several mental health issues. As a result, they end up investing more time, and in the worst-case scenarios, messing up the diagnosis.

To solve this big clinical challenge, you can build a clinical decision-making support platform that works on AI and ML technologies and assist providers to diagnose mental health illness very seamlessly and accurately.

Such a type of platform leverages the both historical and real-time clinical and wellness data of multiple patients and sophisticated AI ML algorithms to figure out what causes the mental illness and what is the perfect care plan for a particular patient.

Considering the fact that the problem is real but there are not many players solving this problem for specific mental health specialists, you will most likely succeed easily.

2) Mental health platform for the school and university students:

As discussed earlier, people in their early 20s have a different set of mental health challenges. To solve those challenges, you can tie up with high schools and universities and offer them a dashboard from where they can assist their students to develop the highest level of mental wellness.

3) Mental health platform for employees:

Like students, employees also experience some very unique mental health challenges. Considering the fact that almost all employers run employee wellness programs, you can start a mental health business targeting employers. Here is a brief: you provide employers with a digital platform which they further provide to their employees. Using it, employees can talk to therapists, set goals, work on it, read resources and employers can track the progress of every employee. Here, you make money by charging employers a fixed annual or monthly fee per each employee.

4) Mental health platform for cancer patients:

Patients diagnosed with any form of cancer undergo awful mental health due to physical, social and financial problems. What makes the situation even worse for them is their negligence toward mental health as they are already preoccupied with their tiring cancer treatment. What you can do here is build an online platform for cancer patients which helps them to focus on their mental health, attain mental wellness and be active members of the community – all while undergoing cancer treatment.

5) Yoga-focused mental health platform:

It has been proven scientifically that yoga heals the mind. So why not build one of its kind yoga app which is focused on solving the mental health problems of patients? With this app, users can either perform different kinds of yogas that are pre-recorded or participate in live group or one-on-one yoga sessions. Yoga apps equipped with mental wellness features like meditation with built-in soothing music instantly make users free from anxiety and negative thoughts. You can both make money and attract a large number of users by applying the freemium model.

6) B2B mental health chatbot:

mental health chatbot

Source: https://www.makerobos.com/

There are thousands of online platforms focused on mental health. However, almost all of them lack a very important feature – chatbot. If they integrate a chatbot by building a custom one, it costs them very high. And when it comes to integrating 3rd party readymade chatbots, there is no such popular mental health-focused chatbot that is specifically built for mental health businesses. You have to leverage the opportunity here. You can build a custom and specific chatbot for mental health and sell it on a subscription model to all mental health startups, clinics, and enterprises and let them integrate it into their websites, web apps and mobile apps. This is called chatbot-as-a-service!

7) Mental health platform for healthcare professionals:

Lately, especially during and after the first wave of the pandemic, it has been observed that almost all healthcare professionals are victims of mental health challenges. Labour shortage and ever-increasing administrative and clinical work make the situation worse for them. So, to help healthcare professionals enjoy their work and deal with common mental health challenges, you can empower them with a mobile platform that is developed specifically for them. Here, a feature that enables healthcare professionals to talk to each other about mental health challenges can prove to be game-changing!

You have an idea. Now, what’s next? How to build a mental health app?

Converting an idea into a living app is not a task. It is a process and that process deals with not only coding but several other tasks.

The following is the complete roadmap to building a mental health app.

app development process

FAQs on mental health app development

1) How much does it cost to build a mental health app?

To be honest, it is never possible to predict the cost of any kind of mobile or web app development without knowing the exact requirements as there are multiple factors that influence the cost. Similarly, the time to build a mental health app also depends on the feature set, technology, app type etc.

2) How do top mental health mobile apps make money?

Calm is the most commercially successful mental health mobile app which makes money by following the freemium model. Under the freemium model, it facilitates users to utilize some of the very common features of the app without paying anything. But to utilize advanced features, the Calm app charges a fixed monthly or yearly fee.

3) What is the best technology stack for a scalable mental health app?

React.js for the frontend, node.js for the backend and MongoDB for the database is the best technology stack to support an increase in the number of users in future.

4) How to save costs on mental health mobile app development?

You can opt-in for the MVP version of the mobile app which consists of only basic and common features. You can build a cross-platform app that works on both iOS and Android devices with a single codebase. Or, you can build a PWA (progressive web app) which has features and UI/UX similar to mobile apps but open on browsers.

5) Are there any laws you have to address for your mental health app?

If your mental health app stores, uses or shares any personal or financial data of patients, you must adhere to the healthcare data privacy laws such as HIPAA (USA), PIPEDA (Canada), and GDPR (EU).

How can we help you kill the competition with best-in-class mobile apps?

We’re an Ontario-based healthcare-focused IT company. We are driven by healthcare IT passion and healthcare IT expertise.

What makes us different is that we understand healthcare. We have an operational center in Canada and a state-of-the-art development center in India.

Our team includes healthcare-specific developers, UI/UX designers, business analysts, compliance specialists and QA engineers who work in the perfect rhythm to build epic healthcare solutions for startups, enterprises and individual providers.

Since we have been dealing with only the healthcare industry for 7+ years, we have earned a profitable mastership in the healthcare business, technology and compliance.

So, this way, we are capable of helping you in all technical, business and compliance challenges which are stopping your way to a successful mental health startup!