Halifax-based health-monitoring venture HealthEMe has re-focused its attention to monitor the management of all chronic diseases as well as mental health.

The company was spun out of Halifax ad agency WeUsThem in early 2023 as a separate software business unit. Its first product imTEEN was originally released by WeUsThem and allowed youth to track and manage their mental health by self-monitoring for signs of common mental illnesses. Much of the platform was based on the research of Dr. Stan Kutcher, a professor emeritus of psychiatry at Dalhousie University.

HealthEMe now uses a business-to-business revenue model, selling subscriptions to organizations like government agencies, healthcare institutions and the post-secondary sector including universities and colleges. Insurance companies have also shown interest, part of a broader trend towards digital healthcare in the insurance industry for risk management, the company said.

Recently, following requests from users, the founders have re-developed their platform as a white label SaaS product that allows users to focus on managing a wide range of health problems.

“Our users saw the product as supporting patients over a long time and asked if we could change the rubric of the platform to suit different needs,” co-founder and president Ashwin Kutty told Entrevestor.

Kutty, who co-founded both businesses with CEO Faten Alshazly, said HealthEMe is now in use in six countries: Canada; the U.S.; India; South Korea; Costa Rica and Panama.

The venture recently attended the international tech conference WebSummit Vancouver in order to cultivate interest from potential clients.

“We stand out internationally because our platform is extremely modular and flexible, bringing patient-focused cultural context,” said Kutty. “We offer so much applicability that most competitors don’t have. Our eventual and long-term focus is the whole of healthcare, supporting patients across various levels of care.”

The company is taking a two-pronged approach to sales, focusing both on North America and emerging markets. In Costa Rica, the platform connects rural-dwellers to the health system, and allows access to their health records. The challenge in North America is that the sales cycle takes so long.

“Emerging markets are easier to convince and get to but the number of introductions and meetings can be challenging,” said Kutty.

The founders originally noticed a structural problem facing healthcare globally: a worker shortage. The medical labour force worldwide, including for mental healthcare, is failing to keep pace with population growth, with the World Health Organization projecting a shortfall of 10 million workers by 2030.

“We are at a place where we need to find a solution that actually meets the unmet need (for services), even here in Nova Scotia. We can continue investing in recruiting and training more healthcare providers, but to meet our immediate need, alternate sources of support are required and technology has to be that intermediary until we balance the supply and demand equation,” Kutty told Entrevestor in a previous interview.

In 2020, Alshazly and Kutty won the Nova Scotia Health Authority's Health Challenge pitch competition, which bagged them $100,000 and a commercialization deal with the province.

To date, the venture has been bootstrapped by the two founders, and currently has five staff. A business development person will soon be hired.