Ember Innovations is a small team with a big mission; we believe in the power of innovation to radically change the mental health and wellbeing landscape, and are committed to collaboratively increasing the range of highly effective and accessible solutions.
We are connecting people and organisations together in ways that will grow sustainable ideas, understanding and supporting innovators in their aspirations, challenging barriers to mental health and wellbeing innovation through systems change advocacy at the policy level and bringing collective energy to unmet needs in society through challenge-led innovation.
What are three cool things that we’ve been doing in the last year?
Through 2022 we have been bringing our strategy to life by building relationships and testing out some of our ideas. These have included:
- Bringing the voice of innovation to leading sector conferences like Transforming Mental Health, the International Mental Health Conference, TheMHS and eMHIC by supporting innovators and creative thinkers to attend, sharing their ideas as inspiration for change and ensuring those from “outside the system” are an integral part of the conversation; cross pollinating ideas about what the future might look like if we did things radically differently;
- Hosting a first of its kind discussion between philanthropic foundations from across Aotearoa to understand how they are navigating investment into mental health and wellbeing innovation. Understanding the needs of stakeholders is important if we are to impact the amount of capital and support that flows towards people providing innovative solutions outside the government funded system.
- Being a part of strategic conversations locally, nationally and globally- spreading innovative ways of doing into things like system and service planning, digital health policy framework, future workforce design and suicide prevention initiatives.
- We also hosted our first “Innovation Dinners” across the motu. These dinners are a space to acknowledge and celebrate mental health innovators while at the same time building community and helping these inspirational individuals to feel supported in their work. Building on these face-to-face connections our online community “Mental Wellbeing Innovation Aotearoa” has also continued to grow on Linkedin as momentum around the collective movement and desire for change increases.
What are we looking forward to next year?
- We have been leaning into the world of data and have been intrigued by the question: What is the role of data as a critical enabler within a mental health innovation ecosystem? There is energy to explore how data might be used effectively in healthcare. Whether this is through new way of looking at data that will inform innovation, the use of AI and digital mental health support, data sovereignty or wearable technology that will provide insight for real time decision making. In the coming year we will host a series of collective discussions to understand the potential of data help us tackle some of the big challenges in mental health and wellbeing.
- We are in the early stages of our first official ‘Challenge,’ through which we are working with a diverse group of stakeholders to focus energy and resource around a specific mental health and wellbeing gap. Our first Challenge focuses on youth in North Auckland and comes from our exploration of challenges reflected in health, mortality and education data when our young people are not feeling engaged or valued. We are starting by asking young people, their families and other key people in their lives about what encourages and what gets in the way of them flourishing, before exploring how we can identify, support and grow innovation that will work to support their wellbeing.
The future is bright, and even when there are a range of forces impacting our collective wellbeing, we believe in the power of collaboration and innovation to provide support for those amongst us with the greatest need.
The work of everyone involved in eMHIC is important to us as we believe you are all on the forefront of e-mental health innovation. Several of our team members and innovators will be attending the eMHIC congress in November, (including our Director as the congress’ emcee) so please introduce yourself to any one of us. We’d love to discuss the current and future state of Mental Health Innovation in your part of the world!
Find out more about our work at Ember Innovations here: https://www.emberinnovations.nz/