Before we dive in, let’s get to know you a little bit more and find out how AIME Heath came about?
Aime Health came about through my own personal experiences of dealing with grief, depression and anxiety and talking to friends, colleagues, counsellors, doctors and patients over many years – along with working with clinical psychologists, entrepreneurs and coaches, I thought there must be a better way to provide immediate access to better quality information (on how our mind and emotions work, as well as why some people struggle and others thrive) and provide darreself help care in mental and mind health support and coaching, whilst taking a scientific holistic approach – mind, social, relationships, physical, mindset etc I have always had an enquiring and scientific mind and understanding how things work is very important to me. By using current technology and taking advantage of the newer coming technologies, AI, wearables, quantum computing etc we will be able to develop a complete automated support platform to help people immediately in any language, plus improve the scientific knowledge around this whole area. I wrote out the moonshot for Aime at a technology conference, called Abundance 360 in Los Angeles, 2019 where I met and shared it with Gerassimos. He was excited to come on board as a cofounder and this is where the journey started. We have personally invested the necessary funding between us – we have been working in stealth mode building a small team in researching and developing ideas in this space to provide products and services in this area. We mapped out every digital product in the space looking at the good and bad bits. We want Aime to be clinically relevant, safe to use and based in good science and most importantly make a difference. We are also co funding PhD programmes in psychology at Bath university in digital mental wellness and prevention.
Historically speaking, health has always been relatively inaccessible because we had to go to the medical centre to get checked. Health apps are growing in popularity, and it might be that the pandemic has helped speed things up, but do you see a future in medicine where everything is much more digitised, and many more straightforward procedures can be done from home?
There is definitely an exponential growth to digitise a lot of healthcare – an obvious success story is AI algorithms now reading X-ray pictures faster and better than a radiologist – using remote monitoring in many conditions from heart monitoring to diabetes and self support and AI we will defiantly be able to create more flexible health care systems. However good digital systems are there will always be a place for face to face healthcare practitioners – think of the technologies as empowering both the patients and the healthcare providers. In mental health care support there are not enough therapists and there will never be enough n the western societies, when you come to other countries there is hardly any support at all. By providing basic digital prevention and education as well as first level support this will help support hundreds of millions of people – this will have a massive impact in there lives and families.
AIME takes an AI based approach to improve the process. Can you share more about how your product works in practice?
Aime is a mind health support app that is launching in late 2022 running on IOS and Android platforms – it helps people navigate the ups and downs of life. It is a safe place for them to go and learn about how their minds and emotions work, and provide a safe place for them to explore and use different proven psychology tools that therapists use along with mood logging, meditation, journalling, goal setting etc many we use are based on the scientifically proven Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and mindfulnesses, ACT (action commitment therapy) and we have created bespoke guided journeys to help with managing stress, low grade anxiety, self esteem, low grade depression, eating disorder, loss and grief, loneliness. There is also an automated chat bot element to guide people through different issues. We will be adding AI and data analysis.
We’re still in the early days of healthtech as an industry. What do you believe is the potential for AI, more generally, in healthcare?
AI will appear in all areas of healthcare over the coming decade – from direct care , support, diagnostics through to research. It will transform vast areas of healthcare.
Can interested patients already use your app?
Interested patients can go to our website and join the current closed MVP by registering – though many new features and benefits are being added ready for the soft launch in October 2022, and we will be constantly updating the content and tools.
How big is your team now? Can you tell us about culture at AIME Health?
Our team is growing there are now about 30 people involved a small core team working directly full time along with part time therapists and advisors. The team is very diverse both in age, sex and countries. We run the business virtually which was a necessary due to Covid, though this has allowed us to take a very international approach with people working in 6 different countries currently (UK, Switzerland, Greece, Turkey, Ukraine and USA).
We now have our in house technology developers, psychologists, therapists , neuroscience, medical, business and marketing advisors. The culture in any early stage start up is of a can do mindset and there is a lot of crossover in jobs.
Market conditions are quite challenging at the moment. How is this impacting AIME and what is your main focus as a business over the next 12 months?
The need for Aime has never been higher. The next 12 months there are 4 key areas –
