#Om1 Mark II

[zootoo]

Two Heads are better than one by Robert Streithorst

[un-enfant-immature]

As demand for mental health services soars, SonderMind raises $27 million to expand its services

“Our real focus is on democratizing mental healthcare,” says SonderMind co-founder chief executive, Mark Frank.

His company, founded back in 2017, is having a moment. With the restrictions and economic stresses caused by the government’s efforts to mitigate the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic in the US, demand for mental health services is soaring. And it’s compounding what was already a mental health crisis in the US. 

A 2019 article from Bloomberg Businessweek laid out the scope of the problem in stark terms. In 2017, 47,000 people died by suicide in the US and there were 1.4 million suicide attempts — a suicide rate that’s the country’s highest since World War II, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Drug overdoses, another measure of the nation’s anguish, killed 70,000 people in 2017. Another 7% of U.S. adults reported suffering at least one major depressive episode in 2018.

Taken together, the data points to a tremendous health problem. One that the current healthcare system is only now grappling with.

SonderMind’s chief executive sees his company as part of the solution.

Most mental health practitioners don’t operate within a healthcare network or take insurance, which means that the only folks with access to care are the ones that can afford the high price of therapy. SonderMind changes that equation by offering practitioners a toolkit and back office services so they can bill insurance providers and take care of the operational side of running a healthcare practice. It also acts as a funnel, gauging the needs of potential patients and connecting them to the therapists that are best suited to provide them the care they need. That lets practitioners focus on seeing patients, the company said.

The company currently counts 500 providers on its marketplace, which operates in Colorado, Arizona, and Texas, and has raised $27 million in its latest round of financing to extend its services to other parts of the US.

The San Francisco-based investment firm General Catalyst led the financing which also included additional new investors F-Prime Capital and participation from previous investors like the Kickstart Seed Fund, Diōko Ventures (managed by FCA Venture Partners) and Jonathan Bush. 

“This financing provides the fuel to support our growth objectives and advance our mission to make behavioral health more accessible, approachable and utilized by building a modern marketplace that holds great appeal to both clinician and patient,” said Mark Frank, co-founder and chief executive officer of SonderMind, in a statement.

The investment extends General Catalyst’s funding into healthcare services in recent years and represents a continued emphasis on healthcare services for the firm. “Healthcare is obviously a really important thesis for GC as a whole,” says Holly Maloney Burbeck, a managing director at General Catalyst. “This is going to be one of the largest value drivers for VC this decade.”

General Catalyst already had a robust portfolio of healthcare focused companies — including Livongo, OM1, and Oscar Health

For Maloney Burbeck, the investment in SonderMind grew out of the firm’s exposure to mental health investment through another portfolio company, Mindstrong Health. “Mindstrong forced us to explore… access to care and finding care,” says Maloney Burbeck. 

The General Catalyst investor sees the investment in SonderMind as also helping to open doors for more people to join the profession.

“It helps people to start their business for sure. It helps more people pursue it as a career path,” she said. And that’s good for a country where more mental health professionals and better access to care are desperately needed. 

[magzoso-tech]

As demand for mental health services soars, SonderMind raises $27 million to expand its services

New Post has been published on https://magzoso.com/tech/as-demand-for-mental-health-services-soars-sondermind-raises-27-million-to-expand-its-services/

As demand for mental health services soars, SonderMind raises $27 million to expand its services

“Our real focus is on democratizing mental healthcare,” says SonderMind co-founder chief executive, Mark Frank.

His company, founded back in 2017, is having a moment. With the restrictions and economic stresses caused by the government’s efforts to mitigate the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic in the U.S., demand for mental health services is soaring. And it’s compounding what was already a mental health crisis in the U.S. 

A 2019 article from Bloomberg Businessweek laid out the scope of the problem in stark terms. In 2017, 47,000 people died by suicide in the U.S. and there were 1.4 million suicide attempts — a suicide rate that’s the country’s highest since World War II, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Drug overdoses, another measure of the nation’s anguish, killed 70,000 people in 2017. Another 7% of U.S. adults reported suffering at least one major depressive episode in 2018.

Taken together, the data points to a tremendous health problem. One that the current healthcare system is only now grappling with.

SonderMind’s chief executive sees his company as part of the solution.

Most mental health practitioners don’t operate within a healthcare network or take insurance, which means that the only folks with access to care are the ones that can afford the high price of therapy. SonderMind changes that equation by offering practitioners a toolkit and back office services so they can bill insurance providers and take care of the operational side of running a healthcare practice. It also acts as a funnel, gauging the needs of potential patients and connecting them to the therapists that are best suited to provide them the care they need. That lets practitioners focus on seeing patients, the company said.

The company currently counts 500 providers on its marketplace, which operates in Colorado, Arizona and Texas, and has raised $27 million in its latest round of financing to extend its services to other parts of the U.S.

The San Francisco-based investment firm General Catalyst led the financing, which also included additional new investors F-Prime Capital and participation from previous investors like the Kickstart Seed Fund, Diōko Ventures (managed by FCA Venture Partners) and Jonathan Bush. 

“This financing provides the fuel to support our growth objectives and advance our mission to make behavioral health more accessible, approachable and utilized by building a modern marketplace that holds great appeal to both clinician and patient,” said Frank in a statement.

The investment extends General Catalyst’s funding into healthcare services in recent years and represents a continued emphasis on healthcare services for the firm. “Healthcare is obviously a really important thesis for GC as a whole,” says Holly Maloney, a managing director at General Catalyst. “This is going to be one of the largest value drivers for VC this decade.”

General Catalyst already had a robust portfolio of healthcare-focused companies — including Livongo, OM1 and Oscar Health.

For Maloney, the investment in SonderMind grew out of the firm’s exposure to mental health investment through another portfolio company, Mindstrong Health. “Mindstrong forced us to explore… access to care and finding care,” says Maloney. 

The General Catalyst investor sees the investment in SonderMind as also helping to open doors for more people to join the profession.

“It helps people to start their business for sure. It helps more people pursue it as a career path,” she said. And that’s good for a country where more mental health professionals and better access to care are desperately needed. 

[winteram5]

Week 7 Looking at Photographs 16.9.2017

This photo, shot in raw, as shot converted to jpeg in PS. I use a 4/3rds camera Olympus OM1-Mark II.  

More traditional thirds rule, framing although the pond is not thirds the edges are, multi-layered levels of interest, depends on your view. 

Anne Pacey

Canberra 

[zootoo]

Day Dreamer by Robert Streithorst

[zootoo]

Happy by Robert Streithorst

[zootoo]

Hold your Head Up by Robert Streithorst

[winteram5]

Week 7 Looking at Photographs 16.9.2017

This photo, shot in raw, as shot converted to jpeg in PS. I use a 4/3rds camera Olympus OM1-Mark II.  

Colours are not vibrant, but that’s in keeping with the vintage of the tinware framed in the window frame. Although the horizontal lines are not parallel in the image it works better than those I took that was. 

The Black and white image I wanted the dust particles on the window frame to be more prominent in keeping with the age of the tinware, old, dusty. Overall the writing on the Bushells tin in both images I would have like to be more readable but one could say has faded with time as well, not only incorrect capture! 

An interpretation or ones own preference. 

Anne Pacey

Canberra 

[winteram5]

Week 7 Looking at Photographs 16.9.2017

This photo, shot in raw, as shot converted to jpeg in PS. I note the contrast colours and size, the lines, the different textures.  I use a 4/3rds camera Olympus OM1-Mark II.  

Anne Pacey

Canberra 

Looking at Photographs

Hello Students,

I wanted to thank you all for your continued engagement with the TUMBLR blog over the non-contact period. I am so glad to see so many of you have found film cameras and are experimenting with shooting film. The images are looking great.

Those of you who have expressed a desire to move on to other forms of alternative process photography, rather than return to shooting film, are encouraged to do so. This link may be a fun place to start exploring what is out there.

http://www.alternativephotography.com/processes/

For the remaining few weeks of this session, students are encouraged to branch out and conduct their own experiments in whatever process they desire. There are so many photographic processes around that it wouldn't be possible to cover each of them in a single semester.

For the remaining weeks, we will be speculating about why we have seen a rise in the popularity of certain alternative and analogue processes. We will also discuss different artists and photographers who are engaging with contemporary issues through analogue and alternative processes and conduct some more in-depth explorations of certain analogue or alternative processes.

This week’s task can be considered as a crash course in visual literacy. It will involve you looking at photographs, and considering how we interpret them, how they speak to us, and in turn, how we might talk about them.

I have created a substantial slide show that is broken up into the categories of TEXTURE, PATTERN, LINE, CONTRAST, SIMPLICITY, RULE OF THIRDS, BALANCE, FRAMING, CROPPING, SHAPE, DISTORTION, POINT OF VIEW (ANGLE), and TIME/MOTION. These categories are all terms associated with visual experience. They are ways of decoding the abstract nature of a photograph, rationalizing their existence and content into language and terms of human experience. This list is far from exhaustive and should be considered a starting point only.

Your task this week is to review this slide show and consider the images in terms of language and experience. Think about them in relation to these terms. (Remember that some examples could easily be used in multiple categories. A photograph, like a person, is rarely only one type of thing.)

Once you start thinking in terms of visual language, you can apply these terms as you are making an image (with or without a camera). Once you have digested the slide show, take this visual vocabulary and apply it to some of your own work. Make a post on the blog sharing your latest work (or examples of past work that you feel like talking about in a new way) and describe how it functions as a photographic image in visual terms.