Improving Mental Health Management With Chatbots

Monique Levy, chief commercial & strategy officer, Woebot Health, reviews how the pandemic impacted mental health and how consumers prefer to engage with technology for their care.

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Welcome back to PopHealth Perspectives, a conversation with the Population Health Learning Network where we combine expert commentary and exclusive insight into key issues in population health management and more.

In this episode, Monique Levy shares survey findings on consumer preferences for mental health technology.

My name is Monique Levy. I'm chief strategy and commercial officer at Woebot Health. I've been in health care my whole professional career. I started off as a clinical and research psychologist, and then I moved into the business and technology side of health care. I've been helping wonderful companies innovate and go to market for about 20 years.

Can you tell us a little bit about the Woebot Health Survey?

Woebot Health is pioneering a whole new generation of technology that can create a human-level bond with people. Of course, we're very deep on the clinical and research side. We are deeply talking with customers and have our own consumer base with about a million people that are using the consumer product.

We wanted to get a pulse about how US adults were thinking about this idea of tech, particularly chatbots, being at the center of their mental health care. It's a hard concept to get across, but we found a way to ask them about it. We surveyed over 1000 US adults and tried to understand their attitudes about this kind of tech.

What were some key findings from the survey?

It was fantastic to see. I had to double take when I got the results because I wasn't expecting this. The first big picture, just to ground us, was an overall understanding that tech is going to be a part of how mental health is going to be delivered. We could have seen something else. We could have seen fear about this or more traditional thinking that it must be human-only.

The next thing was a positive attitude towards chatbots, or a conversational piece to this software being part of the delivery, and even more so if it's scientifically validated. That was just incredible to see—both this positive attitude towards the conversational interface itself, but then the added understanding that the scientific evidence would bump it up.

Can you comment more generally on how the mental health needs of Americans changed during the pandemic?

Yes. I think this has been widely written about. I think the CDC has been tracking this quite closely, and there was a correlation between the rise of cases and anxiety and depression rates. But beyond the incidence and changes in peoples' depression and anxiety, the broader market trends and ramifications were more sunlight on this topic.

We didn't start off with a very good baseline before the pandemic started. I think COVID-19 accelerated more attention, awareness, and intolerance of the way things are, and what needs to be done to change mental health delivery and the overall state of people’s health.

How can technology improve mental health care quality and costs?

Technology can enable things we've understood at a high level but have not been able to do. If you look at the way mental health care is designed and delivered today, we've kept at it, but how much better we can make it? We have to rethink some pieces of the design, and technology enables us to do this.

Technology can facilitate better detection and precision with biomarkers. Something like Woebot can help create the relationship and engagement to be able to find people earlier and learn how to identify a person is not well.

Our relational technologies can also reduce the stigma. The fascinating thing about chatbots is that people are more likely to trust and start using a bot than a human because it reduces those first challenging interactions that happen. The engagement piece is really important, to keep people motivated enough to be doing the work and coming back when they need to.

The last piece is being able to do the right thing for right person at the right time. With technology, you can have more choices and efficiency around how you use and disperse precious resources.

In general, where do you see the future of mental health technology going as we move out of the pandemic?

I'm really excited about what's coming. I think digital therapeutics services, software that is intended to treat disease and psychiatry, are going to become more mainstream. There's an incredible group of companies that are producing products that work and will be well-suited for unmet needs.

I think the whole continuum around how you start and continue your mental journey is going to become more integrated. You've seen a lot of companies talking about virtual-first and digital front doors. My hope is that more companies will start thinking about making tech more human-centered and attuned to the lived experience of disease.

I’m very hopeful for what we have coming up the next 10 years.

Thank you. Is there anything else you'd like to add today?

No, just try Woebot and see what it feels like to have this continuous ally with you to help you navigate your inner world.

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This transcript has been edited for clarity.