PATH: Personalized AI Tool For Healing

Inspiration

Our personal experiences with therapy and AI chatbots left us wanting more. With therapy being so expensive, one of the biggest frustrations we had was the fact that sessions were spaced far apart and we had nowhere to go when we needed support in between sessions from someone who understood us. In addition, having to recap what happened in the previous week to our therapist took a significant amount of time away from having productive conversations. We also saw how working in the mental health industry took a toll on therapists' well-being and drained their energy due to how demanding caring for patients is, and we wanted to do something to help alleviate the burden of therapists by empowering the patient to apply their strategies and resolve crises outside of session.

What it does

PATH serves as an extension of a human therapist. It remembers the details patients mention to their therapist in session as well as the strategies their therapists have taught them. Throughout the week, if the patient needs someone to talk to or resolve their crises with, PATH will follow the therapist's instructions about how to help the user - whether to have an at-length emotional conversation, ask questions and prompt them towards more productive thinking, or intervene and stop them from thinking along a certain path. PATH focuses on the patient's long-term progress instead of soothing or enabling them in the short term.

Benefits to Therapists

Therapist can easily catch up on the patient’s activities throughout the week, saving time on explaining & catching up during sessions
Appointments can be spaced further apart if patients can resolve their own crises effectively
AI therapist is available 24/7 and not subjected to exhaustion, burnout, etc.
Patients often forget to apply the strategies their therapists teach them. PATH can remind the patient of what the therapist taught them in session