S2 Episode 7: Navigating the path to Mental Health, with Ben Lakey of Syndi Health
This week, I’m continuing my conversations with early stage startups that are coming through London’s healthtech accelerator ecosystem, which it turns out is pretty extensive. Most of my guests in this series have been part of the Aspect or Sim DH accelerator programs, respectively run by LSE and South Bank university.
My guest, Ben Lakey co-founder and CEO of Syndi Health, has recently been on the SimDH program, having met Jorge his co-founder at Entrepreneur First. Syndi is his second health-focused startup, having also launched a direct-to-consumer prosthetic limb business - and I’m very grateful to him for his introductions to some great entrepreneurs in the medtech space who will hopefully appear on the podcast in the near future.
So we all know that digital health is a huge growth market at the moment, and the range of digital health solutions available through your smartphone is literally mind-boggling. In the mental health space alone, there are apparently about 20,000 apps available, and even those with proven clinical validity are too numerous to really comprehend. For the increasing numbers of people seeking mental health support, even with direction from a clinician, the chances of them finding the solution that best fits their particular needs, without a lengthy and stressful trial and error process, are pretty slim.
That is where Syndi Health and their digital health recommendation platform comes in.
Syndi has created the world’s most accessible and personalised digital mental health recommendation system to enable people to measure and self-manage their health - without asking for overwhelming amounts of information.
Ben graduated in mechanical engineering in Canada, and then came to London to pursue his entrepreneurial ambitions. He completed a Masters of Research in Medical Device Design and Entrepreneurship at Imperial College in 2018, and has been awarded the Royal Academy of Engineering 1851 Enterprise Fellowship.