Digital Health Done Right: Lantern

Digital Health Done Right is a Redox Blog Series that shines a light on a member of our interoperable network. We believe in what our partners are doing and want to share their stories and outcomes with you.

Since May is Mental Health Month, we thought we’d round out this month’s Digital Health Done Right series with a healthcare company who created a platform that gives people access to clinically-proven programs for improving mental well-being.

Founded by medical researchers, technologists, and clinicians, Lantern is a San Francisco-based company whose mission revolves around giving people all the tools they need to improve their emotional well-being while removing the stigma and barriers that people face when it comes to taking a proactive approach to their mental health.

Lantern realized that mental health is often treated as a negligible aspect of healthcare, but theyknew that just as with physical health, mental health requires equal attention, thought, and self-care throughout all stages of life. They were also acutely aware of how problematic accessing mental health care can be, as finding appropriate care can be not only difficult but often out of financial reach.

That’s why Lantern created a different approach to delivering an experience that helps people feel their best—their holistic and thorough mental health programs can be accessed anywhere and at any time on a smartphone or the web. But while their program removes the need to head into a doctor’s office to talk with a therapist, that isn’t to say their programs disregards therapeutic best practices or aren’t backed by extensive clinical research. On the contrary, their programs are translated directly from cognitive behavioral research conducted by some of the country’s leading universities and experts.

Their proven method

Derived from an approach called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Lantern’s programs aim to change patterns of thinking around challenging issues to alter the way people feel and act toward them. CBT adheres to the notion that emotions aren’t just reactionary—they’re products of a cycle that involve more than just immediate responses to stimuli. CBT focuses on the closely-held mental images, attitudes, thoughts, and beliefs people have about areas in their life such as depression, anxiety, or relationship problems, which are mental patterns so ingrained that people often don’t realize they contribute to how they feel and react to life. By thoughtfully examining those feelings, people can better understand how their long-held cognitive patterns influence how they behave when dealing with emotional problems—and how they can leverage that self-knowledge to change their reactions.

Partnering with experts at Stanford University, Penn State University, and Washington University in St. Louis, Lantern developed their programs to be goal focused and actionable. They allow users to tackle specific challenges in their life by utilizing practical strategies and hands-on exercises while also providing tools to measure and track how they’re doing at each step of the journey.

While managing mental health can be a difficult task to assess, online counseling has turned out to be a successful approach, and Lantern’s mobile and web-based programs are proving to be an effective way to build a better self. Lantern’s body image program, for example, reduced eating disorders by 50% in a study conducted in partnership with Stanford University and Washington University in St. Louis. What’s more, the same body image program has prevented high-risk individuals from developing eating disorders in the first place, which is extremely encouraging and prompted the study to be expanded to 40 colleges across America.

Why Lantern works

Lantern’s approach to mental health care isn’t overly complicated. They take a three-pronged approach to delivering the best possible care to users:

Start with a thorough assessment — All users begin by taking a comprehensive assessment that evaluates their current needs, symptoms, and challenges. This allows users to start at a place that is both sensitive to their current state and can accurately guide them to the right care path.
Deliver tailored exercises — Lantern enables users to learn about themselves by identifying and restructuring negative thought patterns. By reinforcing positive cognitive skills, Lantern helps users move through challenges while developing personal skills that can be helpful tools well throughout life.
Don’t go it alone — Every user enrolled with Lantern is matched with a professional mental health coach who’s always available to provide support and feedback and answer any questions users may have.

This third quality is perhaps Lantern’s most appealing and beneficial, as the comfort of having a trained professional guiding you through your journey provides immense support to every user. Not just a companion providing encouragement and insight, each coach is thoroughly vetted and holds an advanced degree in a mental health-related field, and each has experience in protocol-based interventions like CBT, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and Mindfulness-Based Interventions. Every Lantern coach has experience treating chronic illnesses, eating disorders, burnout, depression, and employee wellness programs. Beyond coming into the company already extremely qualified, each coach undergoes an extensive training program and also participates in continual training to provide the highest quality care to users.

Mental health care made accessible

Lantern is doing a phenomenal job of approaching a long-standing health issue in a new that utilizes technology to deliver an improved patient experience. People no longer need to undergo expensive therapy sessions in order to receive high quality and meaningful help for their mental health. Lantern provides a way for people to strengthen their emotional well-being in an accessible and effective way, something that was out of reach for millions of individuals previously. We’re proud to help their product integrate with health systems who want to give their patients tools to build better and happier lives for themselves, and we’re happy they’re part of our interoperable network.

For more on Lantern, check out their website here. Be sure to come back next week when we spotlight another a digital health application that improves the modern healthcare experience.