Spring Secures $1.5M Seed Funding to Advance AI-Powered Depression Screening for Clinicians

VCBeat has learned that Spring has successfully secured $1.5 million in seed funding. The round was led by the William K. Warren Foundation, St. Francis Health System, and Kevin Ryan (founder of Gilt and Business Insider), with participation from RRE Ventures, North Sound Ventures, Saddlefire Ventures, and Rough Draft Ventures. What kind of company is Spring? And what are the distinguishing features of its platform?

Spring, based in New York and founded in 2016 by April Koh, Abhishek Chandra, and Adam Chekroud—all of whom are Yale University PhDs or undergraduates—is an innovative team dedicated to providing behavioral health clinical decision support to healthcare institutions, helping patients achieve better treatment outcomes.

Spring founders Adam Chekroud (left), April Koh (center), and Abhishek Chandra (right)

Certainly, other specialized companies in this field include HealthRhythms in Massachusetts, AbleTo in New York, and Lyra Health and Honor in California, serving as precedents.

The company’s core product is Spring, an online medical tool launched by its team that connects patients with depression to care plans. This achievement has been published in the prestigious journals JAMA Psychiatry and The Lancet Psychiatry, and has been clinically validated.

Spring has established an online platform that collects patients’ mental health information and other personal health-related data through online questionnaires. The platform leverages AI and machine learning methods, integrating data from electronic health records (EHR) and health system partners, to analyze survey results, tailor personalized treatment recommendations for patients with depression, and identify the most effective antidepressant medications.

VCBeat has learned that Spring’s machine learning algorithm currently uses only 25 questions to match patients with the appropriate antidepressant medications, improving the accuracy of initial diagnosis matching by more than 65%.

Depression is one of the most prevalent mental health issues in the United States, affecting nearly 16 million American adults annually. Despite this, depression remains one of the most challenging conditions to treat. Antidepressants are the most commonly prescribed medications in the U.S., yet only 11% to 30% of patients benefit from them.

In fact, treating depression remains a process of trial and error; the variety of medications and the duration of treatment impose long-term and costly burdens on patients. By integrating collected patient data with countless precedents from its platform, Spring leverages its precision medicine model to customize individualized treatment plans for patients, thereby eliminating the need for trial and error.

Sping may also assist clinicians in conducting preliminary depression screenings for patients. Due to the complexity and impracticality of traditional depression screening methods, many primary care physicians are reluctant to perform such screenings during the initial treatment phase. Instead, they tend to prescribe only one or two familiar medications. If the patient’s condition is not effectively controlled during this initial stage, they typically face an average wait time of 21 days before seeing a psychiatric specialist.

Spring has introduced a more convenient screening system for physicians, assisting junior doctors in making more accurate diagnoses and treatment decisions. Furthermore, the airline company effectively increased the depression screening rate among its pilots to over 90% following the product launch.