What You Should Know:
– Trellus Health secures $5M in seed funding and collaborates with Mount Sinai to deliver resilience-driven, connected care, integrating expert clinical and behavioral health for better outcomes.
– The first disease Trellus will tackle is IBD, which is one of the costliest chronic conditions with a high mental health burden.
Trellus Health, a New York City-based provider of resilience-driven care for people with complex chronic conditions, announced it has raised $5 million in seed funding to transform the way chronic conditions are treated, with an initial focus in Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), including Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. The seed round was led by Mount Sinai Health System (MSHS) and EKF Diagnostics, a global medical manufacturer of point-of-care and central lab devices and tests. Trellus has also entered into an exclusive multi-year contract with MSHS to commercialize its patent-pending GRITT-IBDTM resilience assessment and personalized treatment methodology.
What Is Resilience-Driven Care?
Resilience-driven care incorporates positive psychology principles into all aspects of chronic disease management, with a focus on building acceptance, optimism, self-regulation, self-efficacy, and social support. Proven health benefits of resilience include increased longevity, cardiovascular, immune, and cognitive function, as well as physical well-being and reduced risk for depression and anxiety.
Platform for Complex Chronic Conditions, Starting with IBD
Through its multidisciplinary connected care platform, Trellus coordinates expert whole-person care, including both clinical and behavioral health, to improve outcomes and to reduce healthcare costs for patients, employers, and the healthcare system. The Company leverages its patent-pending GRITT-IBDTM resilience assessment and personalized treatment methodology, developed at the Mount Sinai Health System, to support patient resilience and wellness for better outcomes.
Key features of the platform include:
– Convenient telehealth interactions are coordinated with in-person visits with local GI providers trained on the latest guidelines for IBD diagnosis, therapy and medications
– Experienced professional health care team provides care and coaching to build resilience and help prevent flare-ups with personalized care plans for symptoms, triggers and lifestyle needs
– 24/7 access to digital tools for expert IBD management, stress relief, nutrition, and continuous remote monitoring
Why It Matters
According to the CDC, 90% of the U.S.’s $3.3 trillion annual health care expenditure is for chronic diseases and mental health conditions with patients suffering from both chronic and mental health conditions costing twice as much. Despite this, traditional care models fail to address the mental health aspect of chronic conditions, and access to expert interdisciplinary care resources to deliver specialist-level care is highly limited.
The first disease Trellus will tackle is IBD, which is one of the costliest chronic conditions with a high mental health burden. It affects 3 million patients in the U.S. (7 million globally) and costing the U.S. healthcare system over $51 billion a year, according to the ‘Cost of Inflammatory Bowel Disease: An Initiative from the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation 2019.’ Since 2016, the company’s co-founders, Marla Dubinsky, MD, and Laurie Keefer, PhD, who together bring close to 50 years of experience managing IBD and serve as co-directors of the Mount Sinai IBD Medical Home, have integrated resilience-driven multi-disciplinary care into the management of IBD patients.
“Our research on over 200 IBD patients indicates that more than 70% believe their condition would be better managed if they had support for anxiety or depression,” said Dubinsky, who along with being a co-founder and board member, is also a Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine, Chief of Division of Pediatric Gastroenterology and co-director of Susan and Leonard Feinstein IBD Clinical Center at Mount Sinai. “By personalizing care to address the psychosocial needs of all IBD patients and applying the latest evidence-based clinical approaches, we can help patients achieve disease control and enjoy a significantly improved quality of life.”
