MIT Media Lab spinout Ginger is a virtual behavioral health care and coaching service that has unsurprisingly seen a large amount of growth since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to growing its weekly utilization rates by 265%, the start-up has also made major business moves: in March of 2020, Ginger acquired technology assets from LiveBetter, which offers in-app chatting with real people who can help users who are struggling with their mental health. In August of 2020, Ginger raised $50M in a Series D funding round, bringing its total fundraising to over $120M. Venture capital funding for mental health startups overall hit $1.37B in the first three quarters of 2020 compared to $1.09B in all of 2019, indicating that investors see these technologies as having long-term impact on how people approach telemedicine.
Ginger generally relies on user reporting and check-ins to provide the right mental health services through a phone app. However, the company's newest patent application takes advantage of cellphones themselves by using motion and location sensors to detect and provide solutions for poor sleep. Ginger has over 40 patents relating to mental health services, which may account for its successful fundraising as patents are an indicator of future product growth and value. You can view more patents on sleep detection for a variety of health solutions on the Magic Number® Consumer Sleep Patent Radian®.
