Investing to Expand Access to Mental Health Innovation

With Marine Mallinson from Noetic Fund

TRANSCRIPT

CMHI: Okay, so I'm here with Marine Mallinson, seasoned entrepreneur and investor. And Marine, perhaps just give us a teeny bit of a background to you and how you got started investing in mental health.

Marine Mallinson: I started investing in mental health about six years ago. Own money. So personal investment, which gave me a lot of freedom and, what I wanted to pick, invest into. And also the kind of risk and, you know, return, agenda I had. And then as I start doing more of that, I met Noetic Fund, which is a fund dedicated to brain health in Canada. And they were raising their second fund. So I helped them do that. And, you know, co-invest with them. And we only do mental health innovation, innovation that has mental health outcomes.

So we're agnostic in terms of modalities and populations treated and whether it's more prevention or more intervention. And we do it globally. I also do the same apply the same thesis to my personal investment. I guess how I've evolved in doing my investment, over the years is that I'm doing, more on the prevention side, and I'm trying not yet succeeding, but trying to do more, investment.

That would help us address the affordability piece of the mental health ecosystem. And what I mean by that is, we funded a lot of innovation, which is great. Some are already out in front of patients or clinicians. But some are still in the labs. And pretty much 90% of the innovation that we have funded, that I have done personally, pretty expensive, when it comes out of the tube.

And there are various reasons for that. It may be, you know, driven by regulation. It may be driven by, you know, the fact that it's AI heavy. And I know that that's not that's not cheap, or that it, has to do with the fact that payers are not there to support innovation because of risk profiles or lack of understanding of, you know, the efficacy of some of the innovation.

So all of this, you know, and more has contributed to a lot of innovation being expensive. So I'm trying to fund either fintech who would come into this world. So not reinventing the wheel, but literally looking at people who've been very successful in innovative and bringing new financial solutions, at scale to populations and to make them interested in doing that for mental health.

Population, whether it is patients or the clinicians or, again, some of the people that are, insuring some of these, populations. So I think there is something to be done there that's highly investable for me because the fintech model has been proven. We know that there is an issue with not enough, you know, affordability in this space yet great innovation and gazilion people who need it.

So I like this idea of bringing something that has already proven it's, it's worth, into a space that needs it. I would also be very keen to, you know, fund companies that are actually homegrown, as in mental health. And who really understands the behavior of patients the behavior of clinicians, or the behavior of at risk population.

Understand that how they behave and use that data to actually come up with homegrown, payment solutions or reimbursement solutions. I would love that. So that's what I'm looking at the moment.

CMHI: Amazing. And you've actually covered a little bit of this, but what would you say looking at it as an investor, when you look at mental health, what are the areas that you think, highly investable. Now there is a proven need. There's a way to pay for it. This is a business model that works versus some areas that you're excited about. The you can see taking a little bit longer to build the market for.

Marine Mallinson: So, I'm invested for example, in, you know, AI agents that, help clinicians with their workflow. That's an obvious one. The anything that will endeavor to, maximize the efficiency of the existing practices, solutions, businesses, is enormous because there is a huge amount of inefficiency in the healthcare space, specifically in mental health. So anything that pushed a needle a little bit, that is gold, I think the other thing that I have invested in are AI solutions that go direct to patients.

So with that, you know, middle needle, bridges, and I think there is a very interesting space there. It's quite well funded already, but I think we need to the money we put into that space needs to come with a very disciplined view on how we're going to do that. Well, because, you know, if you're investing in, you know, an AI agent that is sitting basically at the hip and next to, you know, every neuron of someone every night, every hour of the day and night.

You're, you know, it's a huge responsibility. So, you know, think very carefully about what that can do and how that's complementing what's already out there. But I'm very bullish on that sort of thing. Also direct to human. But I think for me, the most obvious in terms of, how we can bring a lot of capital into something that will ultimately serve the mental health, population or the mentally healthy population is to take a slightly more determinant of health approach.

What I mean by that is we understand anyone who's done work in mental health understand that, you know, comorbidities, reality that causalities a reality and that if you solve certain problems such as poverty, you know, you might be able to help further down the line with great mental health outcomes. So for me, I for example, I think bringing putting money into, say self-driving cars, which we know through research and empiric and clinical research, we know reduces anxiety and we know anxiety is highly attached to depression.

And know depression is highly attached to diabetes. If we sort of look at it like that, you know, chain of reaction effect, we can take a much broader thesis on where, private capital can actually be put to work in things that are already working. I mean, no one will dispute that it's a good idea to or maybe some will, but most people don't disagree with the idea that investing in self-driving car is a good idea.

Again, you know, take people who already invest in all this stuff. People invest in self-driving car, people invest in renewable energy. People invest is in clean homes. And to understand that if you do that, you're actually also serving the purpose of mental health at a sort of more systemic level. And I think that's, you know, it's a good idea to start with for people who are a bit more shy and maybe the risk of mental health, but sort of for every thing that is not mental health where you invest, think whether there is an impact on mental health, either at the prevention level or, you know, intervention level.

And I think that would allow us to bring a lot faster, a lot more money to this space that that needs it.

CMHI: For someone who is really interested in mental health, perhaps there's been, lived experience and they're looking to come into invest in this space. What is your, top bit of advice, something that you've learned along the lines. But I quite often think of what is the question that you ask when you see a particular deck now, a question that you ask after years of experience that you might not have thought to ask when you were just getting started investing in mental health.

Marine Mallinson: I think they're the same as the one I ask myself as a founder because I have been an entrepreneur, a few times. It's always about going a little bit deeper and understanding the psychology of the founders. I mean, usually when you see a deck, it's already at that stage that, you know, the vision has been honed so that, you know, statistics stack up. You know, the market side of things has been done and then, you know, more or less sophisticated way to present your vision and how you're going to carry it through.

So for me, it's always down to the people at the end. That hasn't changed. And I think if anything, because I am a, it's more, a bit more attention to mental health of anyone I do pay a little bit more attention to the resilience of the founder that I invest in. That perhaps is the change that I will have been lucky to be able to do.

CMHI: Marine, thank you. And thank you for all that you do.