Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled chatbot Wysa raises $5.5M to broaden access to mental health support

Wysa’s AI-Guid­ed Men­tal Health Plat­form Clos­es $5.5M Series A to Bridge the Gap in Employ­ee Men­tal Health (press release):

“Wysa, the lead­ing glob­al AI-pow­ered men­tal health plat­form, today, dur­ing Men­tal Health Aware­ness Month, announced a $5.5M Series A financ­ing round led by W Health Ven­tures, a Boston-based dig­i­tal health investor. Oth­ers par­tic­i­pat­ing in the round include the Google Assis­tant Invest­ment pro­gram, and exist­ing investors pi Ven­tures and Kae Cap­i­tal. Wysa will use this cap­i­tal to sup­port its offer­ing to employ­ers who want to expand their men­tal health ben­e­fits, as well as scale up Wysa’s sales team and ther­a­pist network.

“We are impressed with Wysa’s uncom­pro­mis­ing clin­i­cal safe­ty and unpar­al­leled patient-cen­tric­i­ty. It main­tains a near-per­fect rat­ing from approx­i­mate­ly 100,000 reviews result­ing from over 100 mil­lion con­ver­sa­tions,” said Dr. Pankaj Jeth­wani, Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent at W Health Ven­tures. “As we enter the sec­ond year of the pan­dem­ic, so many peo­ple are strug­gling and seek­ing men­tal health sup­port. Wysa is an exam­ple of how tech­nol­o­gy is help­ing mil­lions of peo­ple access every­day men­tal health sup­port and self-care tools with­out being gat­ed by a clin­i­cal diag­no­sis.” … Wysa is anony­mous, secure, avail­able 24/7 and, most impor­tant­ly, effec­tive. Peo­ple open up to Wysa in just a few mes­sages, and com­plete cog­ni­tive restruc­tur­ing (CBT), accep­tance and com­mit­ment ther­a­py (ACT), dialec­ti­cal behav­ior ther­a­py (DBT), mind­ful­ness and coach­ing exer­cis­es in just five to ten min­utes. Over 90% of users say Wysa helps them feel bet­ter after just one ses­sion, and over 75% of users have more than five sessions.

Recent study on AI-bots for mental healthcare:

Evi­dence of Human-Lev­el Bonds Estab­lished With a Dig­i­tal Con­ver­sa­tion­al Agent: Cross-sec­tion­al, Ret­ro­spec­tive Obser­va­tion­al Study (JMIR For­ma­tive Research). From the Abstract:

• Back­ground: There are far more patients in men­tal dis­tress than there is time avail­able for men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als to sup­port them. Although dig­i­tal tools may help mit­i­gate this issue, crit­ics have sug­gest­ed that tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tions that lack human empa­thy will pre­vent a bond or ther­a­peu­tic alliance from being formed, there­by nar­row­ing these solu­tions’ efficacy.
• Objec­tive: We aimed to inves­ti­gate whether users of a cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py (CBT)–based con­ver­sa­tion­al agent would report ther­a­peu­tic bond lev­els that are sim­i­lar to those in lit­er­a­ture about oth­er CBT modal­i­ties, includ­ing face-to-face ther­a­py, group CBT, and oth­er dig­i­tal inter­ven­tions that do not use a con­ver­sa­tion­al agent.
• Con­clu­sions: Although bonds are often pre­sumed to be the exclu­sive domain of human ther­a­peu­tic rela­tion­ships, our find­ings chal­lenge the notion that dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics are inca­pable of estab­lish­ing a ther­a­peu­tic bond with users. Future research might inves­ti­gate the role of bonds as medi­a­tors of clin­i­cal out­comes, since boost­ing the engage­ment and effi­ca­cy of dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics could have major pub­lic health benefits.

News in Context:

• Con­sumer Reports finds unclear, ques­tion­able pri­va­cy prac­tices and poli­cies among pop­u­lar men­tal health apps
• Teladoc Health, hav­ing acquired Livon­go and myS­trength, launch­es inte­grat­ed men­tal health ser­vice for the workplace
• Dig­i­tal men­tal health start-up Koa Health rais­es €30M to accel­er­ate growth in Europe and the US
• A call to action: We need the right incen­tives to guide eth­i­cal inno­va­tion in neu­rotech and healthcare
• The Nation­al Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine (NAM) shares dis­cus­sion paper to help empow­er 8 bil­lion minds