Alaminda Specialist Clinic and Naluri partners to change mental health care in Malaysia

Alaminda Specialist Clinic, a new psychiatric and psychological treatment centre, has announced its intention to collaborate with Naluri, the country’s foremost digital healthcare provider, to transform mental healthcare in Malaysia.

In conjunction with World Mental Health Day 2020 which falls on October 10th, the two companies will pioneer a new ‘offline-to-online’ (‘O2O’) model of care, combining their respective strengths in psychiatric medicine and digital therapeutics to provide continuous care and monitoring, as well as early detection and prevention, to thousands of Malaysians.

In a regional first, traditional psychiatric treatments for mental health conditions will soon be supplemented with clinically validated digital therapeutic interventions to improve patient care.

Mental Health in Malaysia

Mental health issues, including anxiety, depression and stress, affect 10 million Malaysians, with the number expected to rise in light of measures taken to curb the COVID-19 pandemic as many are faced with new realities of working from home, temporary unemployment, home-schooling of children, and lack of physical contact with other family members, friends and colleagues.

According to the National Health and Morbidity Survey 2019 compiled by the National Institute for Health and the Ministry of Health Malaysia, depression alone affects nearly half a million people, approximately 2.3% of the population.

Mental health, GDP and the bottom line

Together with other mental health and psychiatric conditions, the conservative cost to the Malaysian economy is upwards of MYR 14.46 billion per year, equivalent to 1 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP), with the economic cost estimated from productivity losses due to absenteeism, presenteeism in the workplace, and the premature death of the working-age population in Malaysia.

Mental health support at scale

Since 2018 Naluri has served more than 15,000 members from more than 50 of Malaysia’s largest corporations, multinational insurers and pharmaceutical companies, and healthcare providers. The company, co-founded by entrepreneur Azran Osman Rani, medical doctor and health systems specialist, Dr Jeremy Ting, and health psychologist, Dr Hariyati Majid, employs licensed clinical psychologists, medical doctors, dieticians, fitness experts, as well as the largest team of digital health coaches in the country, to develop condition-specific curriculums that can be mixed, customised, and matched for individuals with a variety of comorbidities to deliver quantifiable improvements in health.

“Through our comprehensive health screening which includes a depression, anxiety and stress assessment and physical health checks, we help our partners identify employees, policyholders and patients who have elevated health risks, and we find that up to 10% of those screened have severe mental health risks that indicate possible clinical conditions,” says Azran Osman-Rani, Naluri CEO. He adds, “Our intended partnership with Alaminda allows us to refer these high-risk individuals to psychiatric specialists for treatment, as we focus on behavioural health coaching for those with early risk factors to mitigate the deterioration to clinical levels.”

Alaminda’s founder and the President of the Malaysia Psychiatric Association, Dr Hazli Zakaria, says, “with less than 1,000 practicing psychiatrists and clinical psychologists serving a nation with a population of over 30 million, we have a stark shortage of professional mental healthcare practitioners, fifty times less than that of the ratio in developed markets like Australia and Hong Kong”. He added, “with one-third of our adult population needing mental health support, and the numbers likely much higher now due to the pandemic, we cannot rely only on the traditional model of face-to-face therapy or even tele-health consultations.”

Dr Hazli adds, “We recognise the breakthrough potential of digital therapeutics to extend the continuity of care beyond hospital or clinic premises. For our patients who are on the road to recovery, Naluri is a key part of ‘step-down’ care, to help us monitor our patients at home and provide us with data on their medication adherence and their ability to lead a healthy lifestyle. This enables us to make a more informed decision to reduce or discontinue medication or treatment, rather than only relying on patient self-declarations. Naluri will identify high-risk individuals early and guide them to receive the assessment earlier.”

Naluri President, Dr Jeremy Ting, adds “because we take a quantitative approach to mental health assessment, we’ve observed an increase of more than 40% in emotional distress at the peak of COVID-19 in late May, compared to early March. Since then, there has been a surge in demand from corporate clients who not only want to provide employee assistance services specifically for mental healthcare, but are looking for a digital solution that caters to a remote or distributed workforce, and a program that emphasises prevention and early detection, instead of waiting for crises or burnouts to happen.”

About Naluri

Naluri Hidup Sdn Bhd is a Malaysian-headquartered digital health therapeutics company that combines behaviour science, data science and digital design to provide structured health coaching and psychological support for members who are at risk of, or managing, chronic diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases or chronic depression, anxiety and stress.

Naluri’s services are available in Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore.

Naluri is available on all iOS and Android devices and can be trialed for free.

For further information, please visit: https://www.naluri.life

For enquiries, please reach out to [email protected]

About Alaminda Specialist Clinic

Alaminda Specialist Clinic is based in Seksyen 13, Shah Alam and it will be the first psychiatric clinic in Selangor’s capital city. The clinic specialises in psychiatric and psychological care, 7 days a week, with 3 pillars of services; prevention, treatment and rehabilitation.

With the rising demand for professional mental health care, the founders intend to launch others clinic locations and utilise technology and digital platforms to enhance service delivery. The main objective is to provide high-quality broad outpatient services, supported by a multidisciplinary clinical team comprised of psychiatrists, clinical psychologist, counsellors and occupational therapists.

For any queries, please reach out to [email protected]