IHH Healthcare, a leading international healthcare provider, has invested into Intellect, Asia’s leading digital mental health startup, to further expand its continuum of care for patients, corporate clients and employees and catalyse a healthier society for all. 

The investment will accelerate Intellect’s growth across the region. Since it was founded in 2019, Intellect has grown exponentially in recent years to serve more than 3 million users in over 20 countries on its platform, including Malaysia, Singapore, India and Hong Kong. 

Its end-to-end mental health services include telehealth coaching, clinical therapy, psychiatry, self-guided cognitive behavioural therapy-based programmes, urgent distress support, and mental health screening – all done either virtually via the Intellect platform or in-person at an Intellect clinic. It focuses primarily on enterprise companies and their employees, and also serves individual consumers. 

As a strategic investor, IHH will co-develop and customise digital mental health programmes with Intellect for its patients, corporate clients, and staff.

In a pilot initiative, maternity patients from Gleneagles Hospital Singapore will be among the first from the IHH network to enjoy Intellect’s offerings. There are also plans to extend Intellect’s solution to corporate clients of IHH Singapore’s iXchange and to IHH employees. 

The cost of treating mental issues is expected to reach around $6 trillion globally by 2030. Within the Asia Pacific, the digital mental health market for business-to-business alone is projected to grow from $3.1 billion in 2021 to $8.5 billion by 2026, with increasing demand from corporates, insurers and consumers.