Our latest interviewee is Corey McCann MD, PhD – the founder and CEO of Pear Therapeutics. Corey has background as a physician, scientist, entrepreneur, and healthcare investor. Previously, he was an investor with MPM Capital and with RiverVest Venture Partners, where he evaluated new investment opportunities, managed relationships with strategic partners, and oversaw board-level strategy and execution at portfolio companies. Prior to that, Corey was with McKinsey & Company, where he advised pharmaceutical, medical device, and biotechnology companies on the acquisition, development, and commercialization of life science technologies. He is a founding member of multiple start-ups including Alcyone Lifesciences, a company developing technologies to deliver therapeutics to the brain.

Dr. McCann’s post-graduate training was at Harvard University, Washington University in St Louis, and at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and he graduated summa cum laude from The Pennsylvania State University where he was an Evan Pugh Scholar. Here’s what he had to say…

How would you pitch your company? What’s your elevator pitch?

Pear Therapeutics is a privately held eHealth company with offices in Boston and San Francisco developing drug/software combination products to address a broad range of severe conditions. The company’s eFormulation platform combines pharmaceutical preparations with user-friendly, customizable, and scientifically validated software applications. Pear’s patented approach provides better outcomes for patients, smarter engagement and tracking tools for clinicians, and cost-effective solutions for payors.

What sets you apart from competitors?

Pear’s proprietary approach of combining digital engagements with pharmaceuticals and supplements makes our offering unique. For many conditions, the combination of a pill plus a form of therapy (multimodal care) is better than either solution alone. We are the only group developing a multimodal therapeutic package combining both pharmaceuticals as well as digital interventions. In addition to developing our own content, we are also working with clinical and industry partners to bring more tested and proven digital techniques to the Pear platform so that these games and apps may reach wider patient populations and serve greater unmet need.

What is your business model?

The main focus of our business is creating proprietary combination pharmaceutical products, therefore our business model is based on a revenue share of these products. By demonstrating enhanced outcomes for our products, we are working with our partners and payors to establish reimbursement for the bundle.

Can you share some numbers? How many users do you have?

We’re still in alpha mode with our platform and first six games/apps will be publically released in collaboration with a large healthcare partner later this year. We can say, however, that we’ve licensed over 20 clinically validated digital therapeutic and diagnostic games and apps, and have amassed the largest collection of clinical data regarding mental and behavioral health and the efficacy of digital therapeutics.

Where do you see the company going from here?

Pear has begun work on several clinical products based on clinically validated digital therapeutics and interventions, including products for addiction, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), schizophrenia, depression, pain, insomnia, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. We have data in all of these indications demonstrating drug/software synergy, and so the opportunity to enhance the standard of care for a large population of patients is really impressive.

Where do you see the mHealth industry going?

mHealth is on the rise and for some consumer segments is already a way that they can track their own health, make and manage their doctors appointments and communicate with their physicians. This will only increase as patients become able to share their tracking and other mobile health data directly into clinician dashboards that will be integrated into the whole of a patient’s electronic health record. Additionally, we expect that digital health interventions will become more frequently based on clinical evidence for efficacy, and hence more heavily regulated by the FDA.

How long are we from seeing modern mHealth technologies going mainstream?

Different segments of the population will adapt to and accept mHealth technologies faster than others, with younger and more technically inclined people leading the way. The rate of adoption of technologies has accelerated in recent years — it took decades for landline telephones to reach 50% of the population but only about 5 years for cell phones. Health technologies have tended to move more slowly since health tech has many stakeholders, including patients, clinicians, researchers, payors and now developers, plus government regulation and oversight. We expect faster uptake of mHealth due to the pressures on the health care industry as a whole, with mHealth tech being able to take advantage of the meteoric rise of internet technologies and consumer mobile devices.