FOCUS: Recovery
 

What does your business do? And what is unique about your health technology intervention?

RAE Health provides real-time interventions through the detection of stress and cravings in vulnerable populations, such as mental health and substance use disorder. Through the use of a wearable device and a patented algorithm in our mobile system, we identify, detect, and track patterns of cravings and stress. RAE Health is building out disruptive technology that bridges m-health and digital therapeutics to provide predictive and proactive mental health with real-time engagement, and just-in-time intervention.

How do you help people with the disease of addiction or in response to mental health needs?

RAE’s predictive and proactive solution empowers the user and their professional support. RAE identifies stress and cravings in real-time, with the aim to deescalate the situation before becoming overwhelmed, simultaneously connecting the user in real-time to their professional support systems.

How has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted your work?

The biggest impact we have felt is in our clinical trials and research timelines. Our primary researcher, Dr. Stephanie Carierro, is a practicing emergency medicine physician and has been on the forefront of the pandemic in Boston. With our patient recruitment and trial reporting, we are also experiencing delays due to shutdowns, isolation, and enhanced safety protocols. As a geographically dispersed management team, we were used to working from home, but we have all had to make adjustments in our schedules as we adopted today’s new normal, but the company is continuing to gain traction daily as we come up with innovative ways to drive the work forward.

What is the biggest challenge as a result of the pandemic?

Far and away, it has been patient recruitment and the ability to enroll participants in our research. As the world begins to open-up, we anticipate a return to some normalcy and recruitment to pick back up again.

What else would you like the broader community to know?

The effects of COVID-19 are going to be felt for a long time into the future in the recovery and treatment communities. The stress of the state of the world and facing isolation away from their support networks are adding to the already tremendous amount of stress for people in recovery. RAE helps fill that gap with positive reinforcement and connection to a care community. We hope to broaden our research scope to monitor the effects that COVID-19 and social isolation has had with treatment providers and people in long-term recovery.