By Elizabeth Hayes  – Staff Reporter, Portland Business Journal

Covid-19 has increased the need for mental health services.

Owl Insights Inc., which describes its product as a “blood pressure cuff for mental health,” raised a $15.48 million funding round, according to a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Owl Insights, whose legal name is Mental Health Data Services Inc., provides precision-guided behavioral health tools. The software tracks how a patient is doing, whether their treatment is working and if not, what to do.

Ascension Ventures and Blue Venture Fund led the equity round. First Trust Capital Partners and existing investors, including The Entrepreneurs Fund and Portland Seed Fund, also participated.

“The proceeds are going to enable us to do a couple of things: expand our capabilities, so we can invest heavily in new products, and expand our reach in serving more customers, both providers and payers, and it’s really building out the infrastructure to scale,” Owl Insights CEO Eric Meier said.

The need for mental health services has never been greater, given the Covid-19 pandemic and related stress, Meier said. In a poll conducted in July by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 53 percent of adults in the U.S. said Covid had negatively impacted their health, up from 32 percent in March. Just 43.3 percent of adults with mental illness receive treatment.

Owl Insights was spun out from the University of Washington’s Department of Psychology. Owl’s client list includes OHSU, Ascension and Inova Health.

Earlier this year, Owl rapidly developed and integrated Covid-19 measures within its platform, which includes assessments for anxiety, depression, trauma, OCD and social determinants of health, along with patient satisfaction measures.