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Week 2 Discussion: Lantern Health
Please review two snapshots of a corporation called Lantern Healthcare – one from 2016 (Links to an external site.) touting some significant financial investment into a company moving from the gestational to youth life cycle stage, and a later version of the company’s website from 2018 (Links to an external site.) announcing a re-calibration/transition of the company.
After reviewing this material, think about what might have gone wrong here that caused the company to have to shift gears. Some of that is stated on the second website; other portions may require you to infer a bit.
Please discuss your thoughts about this company and its short lifecycle. Do you think it was a good idea? A bad one? Do you think that the new approach will work? Why or why not? Discuss your ideas.
Article 1:
Mental Health Startup Lantern Raises $17 Million Series A Round
Megan Rose Dickey@meganrosedickey / 1:15 PM EST•February 1
Lantern, a mental health startup that offers tools to deal with stress, anxiety and body image has raised a $17 million Series A round led by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s venture arm with participation from previous investors such as Mayfield and SoftTechVC.
UPMC Enterprises, the hospital’s venture arm, has invested large sums of money in 12 other health startups to date, including health care software system dbMotion, which had a $235 million exit in 2013, and Evolent Health, a population health management services organization that went public last year.
“As one of the leading integrated healthcare provider and insurance systems, UPMC was attracted to Lantern’s widely accessible, cost-effective behavioral health platform,” UPMC Enterprises President Tal Heppenstall told TechCrunch. “By working with our clinical experts, who are leaders in the mental health field, and our vast network that covers the entire continuum of care, we think that we can add value to Lantern’s technology.”
Lantern plans to do a couple of things with the funding. For starters, it wants to focus more on integrating Lantern into employer insurance plans, so that employees can access Lantern as a benefit. The first step in that process would be to deploy Lantern within the UPMC health system.
Lantern also wants to invest more into research studies to show the economic proof that symptom reduction positively affects the bottom line for employers in terms of health costs. That’s because, Foung said, people don’t access as many health resources (ER visits, involuntary psychiatric holds) if they have preventative tools to manage their symptoms along the way.
This month, Lantern plans to launch a program around mood, as an addition to its programs on stress, anxiety and body image. Eventually, Lantern wants to broaden the set of categories, Lantern co-founder Alejandro Foung told me. For example, while lantern offers tools around stress, it would like to deepen and broaden that to differentiate between workplace stress and relationship stress.
Lantern has been very deliberate and thoughtful in the way it conveys what its product can do, Foung says. Lantern maintains that it does not serve as a replacement to therapy, nor can it cure anyone of anxiety or stress. That’s because anxiety is not curable, but there are proven ways to reduce anxiety and better manage it.
“The point is not to solve all your problems — it’s to feel better,” Foung said.
Lantern is still a very small company, with just 17 full-time employees. By the end of this year, Foung says, Lantern will likely double in size. Prior to this $17 million round, Lantern had raised $4.4 million.
Mental Health Startup Lantern Raises $17 Million Series A Round
Second Article:
A New Chapter
In July 2018, Lantern closed its doors. While Lantern as we knew it no longer exists, our team remains dedicated to providing high quality, accessible mental health care. We believe we can build on the learnings, technology, and skills we attained over the past six years to support a population traditional health care leaves behind.
That’s why we founded All Mental Health, a nonprofit with a mission to deliver free and engaging mental health education. All Mental Health is creating a suite of apps focused on specific life transitions, so we can meet people where they are. Follow our work on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest, or say hello@allmentalhealth.org.
Our first app, Caring for You, is designed to support the sandwich generation, a group of people providing care for their aging parents and their children at the same time. You can download it here.
In addition to All Mental Health, Lantern lives on in other ways. Omada, Ginger.io, Spring Health, and two other health systems yet to be announced, have purchased the Lantern IP, and will be using it to deliver high quality mental health interventions to their populations.
While it was difficult for all of us to move on from Lantern as it was, we’re so excited for what the future holds. And we’re more dedicated than ever to creating a world where everyone receives the mental health care and education they deserve.
https://golantern.com/