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| The new Start app from Iodine helps people decide if their depression treatment is working for them. |
SAN FRANCISCO -- Iodine Inc, the digital health company, announced a partnership with Postpartum Progress Inc., a nonprofit organization supporting new mothers, to provide its community with access to Start, Iodine's mobile health program that helps people monitor their experience with a new depression treatment. The partnership seeks to help mothers with postpartum depression find what will work best for them individually, as well as generate population-level insights around the experience of women with maternal mental illness. These learnings will be shared with the community on a regular basis so they can benefit from others' experience as well.
For millions of people, finding the right treatment for depression is a frustrating, broken process – of the 30 million Americans taking an antidepressant, only about half find their medication effective, 60% experience side effects, and only 30% receive adequate follow-up from their physician. The situation is especially pressing for new mothers. As many as one in seven mothers will experience postpartum depression, and the experience can be particularly lonely and difficult. Without treatment, both mothers and children can suffer from long-term health problems.
Start is designed to address this. The program, which is based around a free iPhone app, combines self-reported data and activity sensor data from users' iPhones so people can assess whether an antidepressant aid is helping them feel better – as soon as possible.
"Many people dealing with depression could endure a year or more of trial and error before finding the right treatment. Start turns validated clinical tools and guidelines into an app-based program to make finding a suitable treatment a more positive, more efficient process," said Iodine co-founder Thomas Goetz, MPH. "We think this can be especially valuable for new mothers, and we're thrilled to work with Postpartum Progress to serve this community."
"At Postpartum Progress we see so many women struggling with treatment," says Katherine Stone, founder and executive director. "New moms need as much support as possible and we look forward to seeing how Start can help them learn what works and what will help them become better advocates for their health."
"Typically, the treatment of depression can be very inefficient and messy," says Dr. Robert Hutchins, a resident physician at the University of California, San Francisco, who helped Iodine develop the Start program and will consult on the Postpartum project. "Start can help that, allowing the patient and physician to tailor therapy more specifically to a patient's needs, symptoms, and side effects."
Start is available free of charge and can be downloaded via iTunes. People can enroll in the postpartum project by entering referral code "PPP2015".
About Iodine
Iodine is a digital healthcare company with a mission to help people find what works best for them. Since September 2013, Iodine has been the lead developer with the Food and Drug Administration on the openFDA research and development project. The company is staffed by a team of data scientists, designers and healthcare experts and based in San Francisco. Iodine has been called"The Yelp of medicine" by TIME.
Iodine doesn't provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, and doesn't recommend or endorse any specific drugs, products, procedures, opinions, or other information that may be mentioned on Start or our other services.
About Postpartum Progress
Postpartum Progress Inc. is a national peer-to-peer 501c3 organization that works to create an atmosphere in which women can recognize when they need help for maternal mental illness, feel safe reaching out for that help, and know that a community of thousands of other mothers stands beside them and behind them.
SOURCE Iodine Inc.
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