A Start-up Founder's Story: Psyrin

Problem

The front door to mental health support isn’t particularly effective. There’s a shortage of physicians and psychiatrists and there’s not enough supply to meet increasing demand. Serious mental illness in particular, affects over 145 million people worldwide and these individuals are 20 times more likely to commit suicide. Exemplifying this is the fact that diagnosis for bipolar disorder takes on average 9.5 years. We need to leverage technology and start embedding it early, to prevent and tackle this demand problem at scale. 

More broadly, there's not much objectivity in mental health. In cardiology for example, you can measure a heart rate, but that's not the case for psychiatry; there's no objective element to monitor. This is where digital biomarkers come in. 

Solution

Psyrin is developing next gen digital biomarkers for serious mental illness. A biomarker can be thought of as a biological signal from the body indicating the presence of symptoms or abnormalities. In the context of mental health, these biomarkers could indicate the early emergence of mental health episodes. Our first biomarker of interest is speech, heavily based on Julianna’s (co-founder and CTO) expertise in this area during her PhD research.

We use the term "serious mental illness" to refer to the mental health conditions that significantly impair function and present in clinical settings. There’s a clearer rationale for biomarkers in these conditions because there are stronger biological links with speech, relative to other mental health conditions. Our vision is to introduce objectivity into care, enabling new and preventative interventions, an approach that is empirically very effective in the context of serious mental illness. 

Journey

The idea first came together around two years ago during Idea Factory. We formally started work in January 2023 and are building at pre-seed stage, meaning we're relatively early on but have some clarity of direction. We've built strong proof of concept foundations and are ready to go testing in a live clinical setting. 

We know what we want to achieve but it's early days in terms of execution, unsurprising given the nature of healthcare. With that said, I'm incredibly proud of the work we’ve done from a scientific perspective. We’re doing things that have never been done before and even amidst several mini pivots and existential questions, the vision remains unchanged since day one. 

At smaller scale, I've seen the impact of our work through the lens of countless conversations - just last week I spoke to a service user with schizophrenia, who thanked us for our work, for giving them hope. It's crucial now to further understand how people are engaging with our technology in a real-world environment, to mould the next stage of our journey.

Learnings

Given the deep tech and deep science nature of our work, it was crucial that we took time to get the science right. But on the flip side it's a very dangerous trap to maintain tunnel vision. In retrospect, earlier user feedback (from patients and clinicians alike) would have been great. 

To this end, the validation piece never stops. You’re always having conversations with potential customers and beyond, including numerous different stakeholders in healthcare; service users in the UK or USA, psychologists and more. You’re constantly pitching your work and validating the most pressing needs.

It's crucial to be independent in your thinking and trust your intuition in any decisions you make. I've learnt to have more faith in myself and my mental frameworks, rather than worrying about people's perceptions. No one is going to hold your hand throughout your journey. Mentorship, companionship and sharing stories is important, but there won’t always be answers. People will give you advice, but nobody will fully understand your company or position the way you do. Ultimately, it’s up to you and your co-founders to take the right path forward.

Mental health awareness

Having co-founders on this journey has been incredibly important. For a countless number of work-related reasons, but more subtly for emotional reasons. We're fortunate to have tonnes of mental health training across the team - it keeps us in check. We make a conscious effort to be vulnerable and closer as a team, because often times the start-up journey is gruelling. The demands can irrefutably effect mental health, but cultivating a culture of emotional support and shared understanding helps to keep checks in place, even in the face of impossible deadlines and heavy work. 

It's important to mark Mental Health Awareness Week. We've made lots of strides in addressing the stigma of mental health, but stigma is still blatantly present, both in the start-up world and beyond. Take this week to reach out, connect and remind yourself and others that every mind matters!

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Psyrin is co-founded by Edwin Wong (CEO and King's alumnus, PhD biomarkers of mental health), Julianna Olah (CTO and King's alumna, PhD data science in health) and Raheem Chaudhry (COO and King's alumnus, MBBS Medicine).

Learn more about Psyrin on their website or LinkedIn.

The Entrepreneurship Institute supports students, staff and alumni, just like Edwin, to start and scale their ideas and ventures through the King's Start-up Accelerator. If you would like to know more, check out our website.