Castlight Health and Lyra Health Announce Strategic Alliance
Jun 25, 2015
Exclusive Agreement to Bring
Comprehensive Behavioral Health Solutions to Large Employers
SAN FRANCISCO, CA AND BURLINGAME, CA – June 25, 2015 – Castlight Health, Inc. (NYSE:CSLT), the leader in enterprise healthcare management (EHM), and Lyra Health, a dynamic, new behavioral health technology company, today announced a strategic alliance to develop and bring to market an integrated behavioral health solution to enterprise customers that combines the latest technology and highest quality service to help employees suffering from behavioral health conditions such as depression, anxiety, and substance abuse.
Through this agreement, Castlight Health and Lyra Health will offer their products together in an integrated solution that addresses employers’ full range of complex behavioral healthcare needs. When sold together, the combined products will provide a seamless user experience, reduce overall medical costs, and increase workforce health and productivity. In connection with the partnership, Castlight Health has made an equity investment of $3.1 million in Lyra Health, and Castlight’s CEO, Giovanni Colella, MD, has joined Lyra Health’s board of directors.
This partnership comes shortly after the introduction of Castlight Elevate™, the newest extension of the Castlight EHM platform, which enables employees to research behavioral health services, make educated treatment choices, and commence care. In addition, Castlight Elevate identifies populations that may need behavioral health support and delivers personalized recommendations for treatment resources, including online options and employee assistance programs. Elevate provides a sophisticated shopping experience for behavioral health services that includes pricing and quality data for residential substance abuse programs and inpatient psychiatric treatment facilities.
Lyra Health offers a complementary behavioral health service that combines technology with active care management to improve patient outcomes. In partnership with primary care physicians and behavioral health specialists, Lyra’s care managers and supervising psychiatrists actively guide patients though the behavioral health system to ensure they are getting better. Lyra Health identifies people with unmet behavioral health needs, connects them with the right care, and tracks outcomes to ensure their care is effective.
“What we’ve heard from our customers is exactly what I saw firsthand when I was a practicing psychiatrist: behavioral health disorders affect friends, family, and employers alike,” said Giovanni Colella, MD, co-founder and CEO of Castlight Health. “Left untreated, these conditions also represent billions of dollars in costs and lost productivity. Elevate is the first commercially available EHM solution that helps employees and their loved ones directly, but the problems related to behavioral health are too large and complex for any one company to solve alone. We look forward to working with Lyra Health, to offer employers the most comprehensive behavioral health solutions available and to address the huge challenges they face managing behavioral health issues.”
Lyra Health was founded earlier this year to work with employers, health plans, and providers to improve behavioral health outcomes. The company combines innovative technology with a human touch to identify, engage, and coordinate care for people with behavioral health issues; guide and match patients with the right providers and treatments; and rigorously assess treatment outcomes to understand what works so that patients get the best available care.
“Everyone knows someone touched by a behavioral health issue – such as depression, anxiety, and substance abuse – and too often those suffering are undiagnosed or untreated,” said David Ebersman, co-founder and CEO of Lyra Health. “With this partnership, we will be able to leverage Castlight’s platform for distribution capabilities to accelerate the introduction of our technology-enabled service to some of the country’s largest employers.”
Approximately 50 million Americans suffer from behavioral health conditions and the current healthcare system is failing the vast majority of them. Studies show that 20 percent of the nation’s working population suffers from a diagnosable mental health or substance abuse disorder, and over 50 percent of those with issues are undiagnosed. Despite employers spending $48 billion annually to treat behavioral health conditions, each year approximately 217 million days of work are lost or partially lost due to reduced productivity caused by these illnesses, costing the U.S. economy over $20 billion.
About Castlight Health
Castlight Health, Inc. (NYSE:CSLT) is a leader in Enterprise Healthcare Management. We believe great healthcare builds great business, and U.S. enterprises can gain control over the $620 billion spent annually on healthcare, transforming a crippling cost into a strategic business advantage. Recognized as a top 2014 software platform by the HR Technology Conference & Exposition, the Castlight Enterprise Healthcare Cloud enables employers to understand and manage their healthcare investments while helping employees make the best possible healthcare decisions. Castlight is a great place to work, honored with a Glassdoor Employees’ Choice award and recognized by Rock Health for Diversity in Leadership. For more information visit www.castlighthealth.com. Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn and like us on Facebook. Source: Castlight Health.
About Lyra Health
Lyra Health is a technology company with a singular focus: transforming behavioral health care. Each year, approximately 50 million Americans suffer from a diagnosable behavioral health condition, such as depression, anxiety, or substance abuse. Through a combination of innovative technology and a human touch, Lyra Health will identify, engage, and coordinate care for people with behavioral health issues; guide and match patients with the right providers and treatments; and rigorously assess treatment outcomes to better understand what works so that patients get the best care. Led by executives from Facebook, Castlight Health, and LinkedIn, Lyra Health is uniquely positioned to transform behavioral health in a way that helps millions of Americans — and lowers overall health care costs for the people and plans that care for them. To learn more, please visit www.lyrahealth.com and follow us on Twitter at @LyraHealth.
Castlight Health:
Jim Rivas
(415) 515-8780
Lyra Health:
Kenneth Baer
(202) 701-6229
Copyright 2015 Castlight Health, Inc. Castlight Health® is the registered trademark of Castlight Health, Inc. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
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