To facilitate administrative tasks and procedures for psychologists that take away time from attending to patients. This is the objective of Eholo, a software created by clinical psychologist Sonia Torras and engineer Eduart Martí that integrates tools for the daily management of professionals.
With this objective, this software allows generating and collecting invoices, scheduling visits, sending reminders, transcribing the content of video calls, and managing clinical histories and patient records. Launched in 2022, it currently has more than 10,000 psychologists, and plans to continue driving this growth, as highlighted by Torras and Martí.
"We adapt to the needs of the psychologist. The ideal, in fact, is that the psychologist does not have to do anything on the platform," but rather that administrative tasks are carried out automatically and without the need for their intervention, emphasizes Torras. With the software, whose price ranges between 38 and 68 euros per month, the company expects to bill one million euros this year, tripling the figures of 2023, when it closed with about 300,000 euros.
Eholo has offered its platform to volunteer psychologists who assist those affected by the DANAThe platform has also incorporated artificial intelligence tools, which allow transcribing and summarizing video calls. "AI does not replace the psychologist, but helps them do their job better", Torras defends. In addition, they want AI to allow the data processed by the platform to contribute to research by universities and entities, and also to that of the professional user themselves.
"The idea is that the psychologist can consult relevant data about their activity and the care of their patients," explains Torras. With this objective, the founder of the platform states that they will continue working to integrate "any tool that may be useful" to facilitate the daily management of professionals.
Taking these facilities into account, Eholo has wanted to offer the platform's facilities to teams of emergency psychologists who are assisting people affected by the DANA. Specifically, it has put its software at the service of the association Psicólogas y Psicólogos Sin Fronteras and the team of volunteer psychologists Psicología en Plural, with the aim of prioritizing attention to victims without administrative tasks taking time away from specialists.
From search engine to SaaS
The germ of Eholo originated in the pandemic. The impact on mental health that it generated in the population stirred Torras, who began to consider ways to facilitate the work of psychologists. Given the number of friends and acquaintances who turned to her looking for professionals with whom to connect, Torras then decided to create a psychologist search engine, and explained her project to Martí, whom she had known since school.
Martí, an engineer with experience in the field of startups, had precisely worked on a similar project at university, and within 24 hours of Torras explaining the idea to him, he generated a first test platform. "When we saw it materialized, we decided to bet on the project," Torras recalls.
Thus, the project was born as a search engine, but it soon began receiving proposals from psychologists to incorporate new tools linked to areas such as billing and contact with patients. "Everything they asked for revolved around internal management, and not the search engine."
Upon observing this demand, Torras and Martí decided to change their model and bet everything on generating tools to cover the needs of professionals as a software as a service (SaaS). The promoters made the decision at the beginning of 2022, when they had been cooking the project for about eight months, and then brought in two business angels, who contributed 30,000 euros to give the project its first boost.
In July of last year, a second push arrived, when they closed a 200,000 euro financing round from SeedRocket business angels. The investment allowed accelerating the development of platform tools and expanding the staff, which now has 18 employees.
To boost its growth, Eholo works with various Spanish professional associations to close collaboration agreements. In addition, it is now focused on optimizing its electronic invoicing tool. Then, it will be the turn of international expansion: the founders of the platform are looking mainly at the United States, where they will begin to validate their software in 2025, with the aim of continuing to grow.