Today we’d like to introduce you to Dr. Yared Alemu and John Hope.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
The riddle I have been working on even when I was in graduate school has been how to improve treatment outcomes for a population that has traditionally has not benefitted from these innovations. It is a myth that disorders like Depression are the problem of the West and the Developed world; Depressive Disorder accounts for 4.3% of the global burden of disease and is among the largest single causes of disability worldwide, particularly for women. If you start large scaling training of highly trained mental health professional, it will take 300 years to address the shortage of mental health providers globally. Even here in Georgia currently, the people who are the less trained that is providing services for the most severe; mental health programs that are funded by federal and state dollars struggle to attract highly skilled mental health professional and the disproportionate number of services are provided by recent graduates from masters in social work or counseling, who are working towards licensure.
TQIntelligences technology is intended to address this problem. We are hacking the Digital Industrial Revolution to address an endemic public health problem. We are integrating advances in digital health and machine learning analytics to provide cognitive insights to augment the service delivery system. Our ability to provide real-time feedback on the severity of the mental health disorder is intended to push the system of care to be more data were driven and effective treatment made early in the treatment process. Our analytics solutions are provided at the point of care. We are able to provide the severity of the psychiatric disorder is based on our ability to integrate multiple data sources, including voice/face/emotion recognition technology as well as data from wearables and smart phones. This ability to integrate data and provide meaningful solutions to augment treatment can be delivered with no geographical limits; in time, we will be able to assist community organizers in South Africa, a nurse in Mexico or a physician in India. They do not have to be experts in mental health and our platform will provide individualized analytic solutions to support their expertise in other healthcare areas.
The ability to develop such a solution is partly due to my training and experiences. I love being a Psychologist in the business of start-up and leadership; this intersection of the science of human behavior, human-computer interaction, change management and behavior change has been instrumental in my development of becoming an outcome driven leader. I have taken leadership roles in the last 10 years that has transformed College Counseling Centers and Behavioral Health Organizations due to dramatic changes in the service delivery model, driven by market and environmental forces. These changes I helped designing and implement have improved the financial bottom-line of organizations, the quality of clinical services and relationship with other stakeholders. TQIntelligence is intended to make an impact both at the micro and macro level.
The genesis of TQIntelligence is partly based on the frustration of the lack of data-driven, effective mental health services for patients being served in the publicly funded mental health sector. Our mission is to facilitate change in the public behavioral healthcare sector to improve treatment outcomes and contain cost. TQI’s Population Health Management Platform, that will be deployed as Software-as-a-Services, intend to integrate advances in digital health and data analytics to achieve this goal. The digital industrial Revolutions has created a tremendous opportunity to creatively use technology to address endemic public health problems, the disparities in treatment outcomes for persons of color and lower socioeconomic status. We are leveraging data to help large and medium size behavioral health organizations, serving poor people to implement best practices in management, adaptation of evidence based clinical practices and proven outcome processes.
My current role at TQIntelligence is focused on organizational transformation through the integration of technology, best clinical practices, and efficient management processes to meet the demands of a rapidly changing health care market place; meaningful data is an essential component of thriving in a competitive and rapidly changing marketplace. In addition, we work with funding sources, both private and public, to successfully design collaborative processes with behavioral health organizations, in adopting empirically supported intervention and outcome measures to increase efficacy of treatment; the future of behavioral health organizations will depend on how quickly they can be able to adapt to this movement in health care towards a collaborative and outcome based practice and compensation model.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Not at all. Came to the US on a soccer scholarship for a boarding school in New England; it was cold and the cultural adjustments were very difficult. That may be when my interest in psychology started; I start seeing a therapist to deal with all the changes.
After graduating, I was accepted to the School of Foreign Services at Georgetown University; after a year, I left the program and took a semester out and worked in various settings in Washington, DC. Despite the anxiety of people around me, I decided to major in psychology. This stubborn determination to take a risk despite all the unknowns has served me well to this day. It almost feels like jumping off the airplanes and learn how to use the parachute on the way down. Nature guards her secret well on the path that is unseen and as soon as I have made a decision to do something with the limited information, the paths become clearer and the road not as scary.
This stubborn determination has also been important in my journey with TQIntelligence. I had no experience building a business, the culture of a startup, the code/sign language of the startup community and did not take 1 business or accounting class. The transition was very difficult and rocky, during the early stages of joining ATDC and going through the curriculum. There were as many staff members at ATDC who encouraged me as detractors who told me “you will fail” “if I were you I would not do it.” While I struggled to package my ideas in the language that is digestible to the startup community, I was absolutely certain about the problem that needed to be addressed; in other words, I am the subject matter expert in the specific problem in the healthcare sector and I have taken advantage of learning from many of our supporters and mentors to continue to refine and pivot when necessary to make it work.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
TQIntelligence leads the transformation of the mental health service delivery ecosystem by improving treatment outcomes and reducing costs through its propriety next generation Population Health Management Platform. The platform is deployed in a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model for seamless integration with the healthcare organization’s existing technology infrastructure.
The platform once fully deployed is intended to be a hub, an engine for mental healthcare ecosystem. For service providers, the platform tracks treatment outcomes and Point-of-Care Decision Support. For funding sources, both private and public, it creates a one-stop-shop to track patient progress and collaborate with service providers on a common quality metrics. For patients, who are part of the data collection process, will get periodic feedback about their progress and struggles in treatment.
The Platform integrates multiple data sources, including voice/speech samples, face/emotion recognition technologies, as well as data collected from wearables and smartphones, as part of this plan to transform the behavioral healthcare delivery sector.
This next-generation data collection and analytics solutions cater to changes in healthcare, that is increasingly personalized, quality-driven, and focused on prevention.
The cloud environment enables integration of clinical, scientific, and exogenous data in structured formats, and will offer cognitive insights into risk stratification, treatment outcomes tracking and help behavioral health providers to deliver individualized and personalized behavioral health care services.
TQIntelligence brings a particular expertise designing cost-effective analytics solutions to low-resourced communities; our platform is designed to address disparities in mental health treatment outcomes, through TQIntelligence’s propriety algorithms to determine the severity of mental illness early and help providers in low-resourced service delivery ecosystem to make data-driven treatment decisions.
What were you like growing up?
Grew up in Ethiopia until I came to the US starting 10th grade of high school. I was a very good student and a decent soccer player. I grew up in the time of the revolution, changes of the country from Monarchy to Communist rule. The chaos has impacted my family and my older siblings had to flee the city and hide in the country side to avoid jail and torture. I remember walking to school and seeing dead bodies by the side of the road; there was a writing on the body about the consequences of not supporting the military junta. The restrictions were wide ranging, impacting movement, speech, a forced participation in community service, supporting the military; it was like living in an indefinite state of emergency.
The most difficult about growing was losing my father when I was 11yo; that took a toll on me, including losing the desire to go school the second part of high school. We did not have counselors, other than a strong social network of support. That was not enough for me. It was until I came to the US and start seeing a therapist I fully comprehend fully the impact of the loss.
The same social network is operational here and we were able to recreate it; we are a large family, including many who were born and grew up here. Since I was the youngest in my family, I grew up with my older nephews since we are apart by few years. My mother is currently living with us and welcomed her first great grandchild.
Contact Info:
- Address: Advanced Technology Development Center
Georgia Institute of Technology
75 Fifth St., NW, Suite 2407
Atlanta, GA 30308 - Website: www.tqintelligence.com
- Phone: 6787709343
- Email: yalemu@tqintelligence.com
- Twitter: twitter.com/TQIntelligence
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