Telehealth company Amwell (NYSE: AMWL) saw subscription revenue pop after adding behavioral health provider SilverCloud and health automation tool Conversa Health to its platform.

Leaders at the Boston-based company, officially known as American Well Corp., say the success of SilverCloud, a virtual mental health provider, demonstrates the high demand for behavioral health services. It also illustrates the significant opportunity to incorporate mental health into its all-encompassing health service offerings for health plans and health care providers.

Amwell acquired SilverCloud for $226.2 million and paid $118.6 million for Conversa in deals that closed in August 2021. SilverCloud, Conversa and other services are a part of the Converge platform, the amalgamation of services and tech architecture that acts as the backbone of Amwell’s services.

“That’s the Amwell way in many ways,” CEO Ido Schoenberg said SilverCloud, according to a transcript of the call, adding that the company uses technology to “leverage the trusted providers that we know, that are integrated in our normal main path of care and just allow them to be dramatically more effective.”

Schoenberg also said Amwell has a clear vision for how behavioral health services and further automation will play out for the company.

SilverCloud, founded in 2012, takes a different approach to mental health care when compared to many newcomers in virtual mental health. Rather than offering only self-guided content or telehealth therapist visits, it seeks to split the difference.

The company’s therapists spend about 10 minutes with patients for check-ins to clarify, motivate or aid them in their progression through cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) modules. And the company boasts similar outcomes to traditional CBT models.

“It takes the same amount of therapist time to [meet] on a screen or face-to-face,” SilverCloud co-founder and Clinical Director Dr. John Sharry said in a previous interview. “SilverCloud proposes another modality.”

Schoenberg during the call held up the SilverCloud approach as one that can provide more care and do so in a more cost-effective way.

“We did that not by hiring an army of psychiatrists and psychologists, but rather empowering the existing therapists to be much more effective with their time by automating a lot of tasks,” SilverCloud said.

Amwell has about 1,400 active behavioral health providers in its network, according to its latest annual earnings report.

Amwell forecasts telepsychiatry’s total addressable market (TAM) alone as a $3.9 billion opportunity. It views the American behavioral health TAM as worth $29 billion and the global behavioral health market opportunity as $52 billion. Schoenberg has previously addressed the unmet need that Amwell seeks to address.

“This market opportunity has opened up more broadly through our acquisition of SilverCloud,” the annual report states.

In addition to providing services, Amwell clients can integrate their own technology into Converge. This allows clients to bring digital tools into telehealth visits for easier service inductions. The Amwell annual financial report mentions introducing text-based cognitive behavioral therapy during virtual visits.

The report also states that health plans typically add virtual primary care, behavioral health service or other condition-specific services after using other Amwell products while working with employer clients.

SilverCloud, which got its start as a research concept in Ireland, also acts as an international expansion vehicle. It presently has contracts with the UK’s National Health Service and similar programs in Australia and other European countries.

“We see very strong demand for behavioral health enablement and efficiency, and we definitely believe … that this is going to be a very high demand module as Converge is being deployed this year,” Schoenberg said.

Amwell’s revenue increased by about 10% to $277.2 million in 2022. Subscription revenue increased by 12%, while per-visit revenue increased by 7%. However, adjusted losses deepened by 43% to $175.3 million, according to its annual earnings report.

Schoenberg’s comments highlight the company’s interest in deepening its behavioral health offerings to enterprise clients. However, he didn’t address the company’s ambitions for the sector.

He also didn’t address chatter that percolated in June 2022 and November 2022 that Amwell was in talks to acquire virtual behavioral health provider Talkspace Inc. (Nasdaq: TALK). Talkspace itself has dedicated itself of late to shifting to a business-to-business approach. In its recent earnings call, Talkspace CEO Dr. Jon Cohen said the company was at an inflection point and dedicated to improving its operations and building more sophisticated enterprise products.