Auckland-based Ember Innovations (an entity within Ember Korowai Takitini) have recently completed an innovation landscape scan within the mental health and wellness space.
“Over the past year we set out to shine a light on what’s happening in wellbeing innovation in Aotearoa. We took a narrow view initially, working through Ember Group’s network, looking for new initiatives with the core purpose to improve mental and emotional wellbeing, whatever the intervention.
We found start-ups and innovators across the country. Most are early in their journey, researching and prototyping new wellbeing approaches. Many unrecognised by the publicly funded mental health sector. All are led by passionate people and are starting to impact their communities. The majority of these are also self-funded, actively seeking capital.
The biggest insight we’ve had over the past year is there is no specific wellbeing community, rather there are a constellation of networks— digital, regional, schools-based, and Māori and Pacifica networks—to name a few. There are tenuous links between these different communities but not yet a sense of a collective movement. We found that these innovators are especially disconnected from the public mental health sector.”