EUGENE, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Ksana Health, a behavioral health company that uses technology to provide personalized insights and interventions to improve mental health care, today announced a partnership with NatureQuant to bring the company’s NatureScoreTM technology into Ksana Health’s behavioral health care and research platforms. In addition to NatureScoreTM, NatureQuant provides a suite of tools to monitor, quantify, and evaluate contact with nature.
The partnership makes NatureQuant’s NatureScoreTM technology available to researchers through Ksana Health’s Effortless Assessment Research System (EARS), an end-to-end solution for mobile sensing and Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) research. Through this collaboration, Ksana Health and NatureQuant are harnessing passive, continuous measurement and data aggregation supporting research on how time spent in nature positively impacts health and wellness.
“We're excited to partner with an organization with a shared commitment to promoting nature exposure as a public health tool, leveraging data to guide personalized interventions,” says Dr. Nick Allen, Co-Founder and CEO of Ksana Health. “We are pleased to be able to include measurement of time spent in nature in our mental health applications. Our collaboration with NatureQuant delivers on our promise to provide mental health practitioners and patients with new ways to make positive changes to behaviors that impact wellness.”
A growing body of research confirms that the time an individual spends in contact with nature is an important determinant of health, linked to cognitive benefits and improvement in mood, mental health and emotional wellbeing. Given the rising challenges around maintaining mental wellness, it is critical to expand access to efficient and cost-effective interventions. Of the many interventions available, few are as simple and effective as stepping outside into nature.
To determine the specific environments that are the strongest determinants of health, NatureQuant has synthesized multiple remote sensing technologies of natural elements (as well as human modifications) to map the entire U.S. Living in a high-NatureScoreTM area is strongly associated with enjoying a longer, healthier life.
“We’re more disconnected from nature today than maybe at any other time in history,” said Jared Hanley, CEO of NatureQuant “Perhaps ironically, technology can be an important tool to nudge us in the direction of spending more quality time in natural spaces that truly improve the quality of our lives.”
Ksana Health's partnership with NatureQuant follows the company's invitation to join the Anthem Digital Incubator, an invitation-only initiative providing resident companies with growth and educational opportunities. During Ksana Health's residency with Anthem, the company will pilot new technology for health care practitioners called Vira through a collaboration with Beacon Health Options, a leading behavioral health services company with approximately 37 million members. Earlier this year, Ksana Health announced seed round funding led by re.Mind Capital, the new global mental health fund backed by Christian Angermayer.
ABOUT KSANA HEALTH
Ksana Health was founded in 2019 in Eugene, Oregon, to translate the tools and findings developed by the University of Oregon's Center for Digital Mental Health into products and services that transform mental health care and research. Led by Dr. Nick Allen, a Professor of Clinical Psychology with extensive research and clinical experience, and Will Shortt, an experienced software business leader and startup CEO, Ksana Health aims to give clients, practitioners, administrators, and researchers digital tools that are defining the future of mental health.
ABOUT NATUREQUANT, LLC
NatureQuant is a technology and research company that provides a suite of tools to monitor, quantify, and evaluate natural elements and exposure to nature. NatureQuant seeks to improve public health through the development of strategies and interventions for the use of such greenspaces through innovative technology. NatureQuant’s tools should encourage practitioners, policymakers, businesses, and individuals to consider how they can create, maintain, utilize, promote, and improve access to nature.
