Trend: Large US employers deploy apps, AI chatbots, other digital tools to boost brain & mental health at work

By SharpBrains | January 9, 2024 |

Employ­ers Are Offer­ing a New Work­er Ben­e­fit: Well­ness Chat­bots (The Wall Street Jour­nal): More work­ers feel­ing anx­ious, stressed or blue have a new place to go for men­­tal-health help: a dig­i­tal app. Chat­bots that hold ther­a­pist-like con­ver­sa­tions and well­ness apps that deliv­er depres­sion and oth­er diag­noses or iden­ti­fy peo­ple at risk of self-harm are snow­balling across…

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) meets Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): Wysa raises $20M to scale up mental health chatbot

By SharpBrains | July 19, 2022

Wysa rais­es $20 mil­lion to expand its ther­a­pist chat­bot into a wider set of men­tal health ser­vices (TechCrunch): Wysa, a pop­u­lar men­tal health app orig­i­nal­ly found­ed in India around an AI chat­bot that helps users talk through their feel­ings, has raised $20 mil­lion in a Series B fund­ing round to expand its busi­ness on the…

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AI-enabled chatbot Wysa receives FDA Breakthrough Device designation for patients with chronic pain, depression and anxiety

By SharpBrains | June 6, 2022

AI Behav­ior Health Chat­bot App Fast-Tracked by FDA (Psy­chol­o­gy Today): Recent­ly the U.S. Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion (FDA) grant­ed break­through device des­ig­na­tion to Wysa’s AI-based dig­i­tal men­tal health con­ver­sa­tion­al agent that deliv­ers cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py (CBT) via a smart­phone to adults suf­fer­ing from depres­sion, anx­i­ety, and chron­ic mus­cu­loskele­tal pain

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Pear Therapeutics raises $175M and goes public via SPAC deal raising the profile of prescription digital therapeutics

By SharpBrains | December 8, 2021

Dig­i­tal health firm Pear goes pub­lic, rais­ing $175 mil­lion (phar­mafo­rum): Pear will make its debut on the exchange today after com­bin­ing with Thim­ble Point – a spe­cial pur­pose acqui­si­tion com­pa­ny (SPAC) – in a deal that side­stepped the con­ven­tion­al ini­tial pub­lic offer­ing (IPO) route and has pro­pelled its val­u­a­tion to around $1.6 bil­lion … Pear specialises…

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On physical activity, neuroplasticity, depression, screen time, neuromodulation and more

By SharpBrains | October 29, 2021

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing this time eight sci­en­tif­ic reports and indus­try resources plus a few fun brain teasers. #1. Study finds ulti­mate hack to pro­tect teen brains from harm­ful screen time: Exer­cise (and good role-mod­­el­ing): “Girls who spent less than an hour on screens and boys who spent less than…

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Growing research points to expanding adoption of online cognitive behavioral therapies, both guided and unguided

By SharpBrains | February 22, 2021

We are see­ing a num­ber of fas­ci­nat­ing meta-ana­ly­s­es com­par­ing the val­ue of A) face-to-face vs. Inter­net-based cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­pies and B) guid­ed vs unguid­ed inter­net-based cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py, espe­cial­ly in the case of depres­sion. Here you have a cou­ple great exam­ples, sug­gest­ing a grow­ing adop­tion in the near future of web-based, and increas­ing­ly per­son­al­ized, interventions.

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