Silta partners with Psychology Cares, aims to enable psychology and neuroscience research centre to access DeFi

Silta Finance announces a partnership with UK-based Psychology Cares in a collaboration that can channel decentralized finance towards mental health and neuroscience research in the underserved market of Pakistan.

Psychology Cares is exploring project finance opportunities for an innovative mental health care and neuroscience R&D centre in Pakistan. The company is looking to seek project finance through Silta, the Swiss decentralized finance solution which facilitates cryptocurrency loans to infrastructure projects by providing them with on-chain collateral.

Since 2015, Psychology Cares has been providing clinical psychology services and cutting-edge research. The company seeks to expand its operations to Pakistan, a highly underserved market. The aim is to create a “sustainable living lab” with a cross-disciplinary approach, meaning that the centre will not only serve patients but also research new clinical methods.

Psychology Cares’ Dr. Wajid Zia, who is the company’s Clinical & Research Director, explains the reasoning behind the project: “??In the European market, the feedback loop between research and its implementation has reached a lead time of up to 10 years with significant potential barriers for patients to receive the most up-to-date care. In Pakistan, we can substantially shorten feedback loops and speed up the application of our research in a safe, modern and controlled environment. This allows us to feed our findings from R&D in Pakistan straight back to clinical practice with relevance for the UK and EU. We hope that this will also raise the profile of Pakistani researchers to an EU level. There is a highly skilled local labour force.”

The aspect of social innovation plays an important role in the project. Banks do not typically prioritise social good aspects in their financing decisions, whereas the credit scoring element of Silta’s solution promises to do so. Once scored, projects approved by the Silta DAO are collateralized using the native Silta token, and as a result, can access finance through various DeFi protocols.

Ben Sheppard, CEO of Silta says, “Psychology and mental health are matters we take very seriously within the team at Silta. Having projects like this, where investments can do some social good is exactly what Silta was designed to do. In our scoring assessment of the project, ESG is a prominent feature that we evaluate and present to the Silta DAO for consideration of investment. It’s important that the project delivers real world benefits, not just pledges on paper.”

Silta’s vision is to connect DeFi lenders to various types of infrastructure projects, initially focusing on small scale projects valued up to $100M. Typically these encompass essential infrastructure assets such as solar or wind power plants, energy efficient street lighting, micro-grids to electrify rural communities, or services related to healthcare and education.