Context
Koa Health is a digital mental health company spun out of Telefonica Alpha. I co-founded the product and team and grew the product and design team from 1 to 40 people over seven years. The company raised €66M and reached 3 million users across 70+ countries. Partners included the NHS, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Janssen / Johnson & Johnson.
Problem
Mental health conditions are among the most prevalent and most underserved in healthcare. The core business problem was two-sided: demonstrating clinical outcomes strong enough to satisfy NHS and pharma partners, while building a consumer product that people would actually use and retain. Cost and access were the structural barriers — qualified therapist time was expensive and scarce; most people who needed support couldn't get it in time.
My role
I co-founded the product and initiative and owned the full product function: vision, portfolio strategy, roadmap, team structure, OKRs, and clinical partner relationships. I was personally involved in the most critical product decisions — the crisis prediction model's solution design, the Perspectives product and clinical trial structure, and the Janssen partnership scope. Day-to-day delivery across the team of 40 was managed by the team leads I hired.
Approach
The portfolio was built around three distinct product bets: a clinically validated DTx app (Perspectives, with MGH and Harvard Medical School), an employer-focused employee health and wellness app called Foundations, an ML-based crisis prediction service (with NHS Birmingham), and a Janssen-partnered DTx companion to Spravato for treatment-resistant depression. Across all three, the design challenge was the same: make clinically rigorous interventions work as consumer or clinical products without compromising therapeutic integrity. I introduced a company-wide innovation programme to increase velocity and reduce cost of investigation, using structured experimentation across data science, AI, design, and engineering.
Outcome
- €66M investment raised
- 3M users across 70+ countries
- 80% recall on ML-based mental health crisis prediction (NHS, 28 days in advance)
- 55% reduction in symptoms and 95% cost reduction in Perspectives clinical trial (vs. traditional therapy)
- 62% increase in delivery velocity in Innovation program
- 82% decrease in cost per investigation by implementing Innovation plan
- 3 digital health patents filed
