Sharecare, the digital health company that helps people manage all their health in one place, today announced that it has acquired MindSciences, the leader in evidence-based behavior change apps.
Founded by renowned neuroscientist and behavior change expert, Dr. Jud Brewer, MindSciences provides best-in-class digital therapeutics that help people reverse unhealthy habits involving food, tobacco, stress and anxiety – which contribute to the most costly and widespread health issues in the United States. This acquisition builds on Sharecare’s existing partnership with MindSciences, through which its tobacco cessation program was made available to the digital health company’s payer, provider, government and employer group customers.
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“In the wake of COVID-19 in particular, our acquisition of MindSciences is a major step forward in optimizing the Sharecare platform to help our partners navigate the next phase of the pandemic while empowering their people to overcome habits they may have developed to cope, reclaim their well-being and build resilience for the future,” said Jeff Arnold, founder, chairman and CEO of Sharecare.
According to more than 120,000 responses to Sharecare’s Flatten the Curve survey, the COVID-19 pandemic has escalated what was already a major mental well-being crisis in the United States, with 9 in 10 Americans reporting they are impacted by feelings of worry about the novel coronavirus and 1 in 5 reporting severe levels of stress and anxiety, says a press release.
Based on more than a decade of peer-reviewed scientific research yielding more than 70 publications, MindSciences’ programs help people understand how their brain works and how habits are formed through reward-based learning. Through a series of clinically validated, interactive daily modules with mindfulness lessons and exercises, MindSciences leverages that same system used to form bad habits – including smoking, overeating and anxiety – to unwind them for good. With over $15 million in funding for its research from organizations including the American Heart Association, National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute and National Institute on Drug Abuse, to name a few, studies on the effectiveness of MindSciences’ programs have been conducted with more than 3,000 clinical trial participants and tens of thousands of real-world users.
Now available to Sharecare’s enterprise partners as well as consumers directly, MindSciences’ full suite of app-based digital therapeutics includes:
- Craving To Quit: a mindfulness-centered smoking cessation program, proven to be twice as effective as the American Lung Association’s Freedom From Smoking;1
- Eat Right Now: an evidence-based program for binge eating and weight loss that, according to a 2017 study from University of California, San Francisco, reduces craving-related eating by 40%;2
- Unwinding Anxiety: an award-winning app clinically proven to reduce anxiety by 57% as measured with GAD-7;3 and
- Breathe: a free app based on MindSciences’ award-winning behavior change programs, featuring simple and effective one-minute breathing exercises to help people be calmer, less distracted, more aware, and more focused when needed – whether in the midst of a busy day or a quiet moment at home.
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“The widespread and persistent worry Americans are experiencing right now is unlike anything I have seen in my 20-plus years of studying, researching and practicing mindfulness – and we must empower people to use the single most powerful tool available to help them weather this storm: their own mind,” said Dr. Brewer, who joins Sharecare as its senior scientific and medical advisor for behavioral health.
