One in eight people in the world suffers from a mental illness WHObut high treatment costs and a shortage of healthcare professionals make it difficult for people to seek help.
Wysa, a company founded in 2015 that provides AI-driven mental health support through an app, is trying to circumvent traditional mental health altogether by giving consumers the ability to receive support directly at any time of the day Domain, co-founder Ramakant Vempati said of Waisa.
Last week, the Boston, London and Bangalore, India-based company raised $20 million in Series B funding from HealthQuad and British International Investment. including this investment, Visa In total, $29.4 million was raised. Other investors in the company include W Health Ventures, Kae Capital, pi Ventures and Google Assistant Investments.
Vempati said the funding will be used to help expand Wysa’s presence across businesses, payers and suppliers in the U.S., U.K. and India, as well as expand its workforce. It will also use the funds to conduct additional clinical trials. In May, it received Breakthrough Device Designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for patients 18 years and older with a diagnosis of chronic musculoskeletal pain, depression and anxiety. Wysa is now working to gain full FDA approval as a prescription digital therapy, meaning doctors can subscribe to treatments.
The Wysa app is an AI-powered chatbot that provides 24/7 cognitive behavioral health treatment. Users don’t need a username or login, which Vempati claims provides privacy and reduces stigma for those seeking mental health care. The app asks users open-ended questions to prompt them to respond with their own feelings. It then guides clinicians to reframe negative thoughts or establish new behaviors through techniques created by clinicians.
“While Wysa has over 100 natural language understanding AI models it listens through, the prompts it provides aren’t AI – they come from a clinician-approved rules engine that allows it to make intelligent, appropriate decisions while maintaining clinical safety. response,” Vempati said.
The app starts with four AI models: the ability to categorize Sentiment, Sentiment, SOS, and Objection (when users feel they are not fully understood).Analysed by conversations between clinicians and designers, the new model Yes Create, eventually over 100 models In the past six years. Vempati said Wysa’s AI was developed through co-design between clinicians, users and designers.
“For example, a large number of users object to redefining negative thoughts about cheating partners,” Vempati said. “This led us to create a new model to detect the relationship users are talking about with trust issues and take a different route to motivate them to follow the treatment pathway.”
He claims that because the app is based on data from 4.5 million users in 65 countries, different groups of people with different life experiences can use it and benefit from it.This diversity is also reflected in Wysa’s team includes licensed therapists from around the world who speak different languages, he said.
Free and premium versions of this product are available. The free version includes an AI companion and an initial set of tools that users can use to improve their mental health, while the premium version offers the full toolset and unlimited guidance. The premium version has three options that allow users to speak directly with a therapist: $144.99 for a quarter of 12 sessions; $79.99 for four sessions per month, or $29.99 for one session per week.
While the company allows consumers to use its services directly, the product also means Applies to employers, public health agencies, and payers/providers.
Wysa’s main competitors are employee mental health benefits services such as spring healthmental health apps such as talking space and AI-driven chatbots such as Wobot. But Vempati says Wysa differentiates itself from the competition by offering 24/7 support.
“Some competitors focus on employee health benefit packages that include traditional wellness or mental health apps, but those apps aren’t available 24/7 and often aren’t enough to help people through difficult times,” Vempati said. “Wysa is the only AI-driven 24/7 mental health solution that empowers users to take a proactive approach to their mental health by providing users with the guidance and tools they need to maintain their mental health and prevent deterioration.”
Vempati claims Wysa address By offering free mental health services, users can access health inequities at any time of day. He said 95% of consumers who access it directly — that is, not through an employer, public health agency or payer/provider — use the free version of the app. Not requiring a login, diagnosis or insurance also removes barriers to seeking care through the app, Vempati said.
For those without smartphone access to the app, Wysa is available on the internet for its corporate and public health partners. Vempati said the company added features for visually impaired consumers and participated in the Apple Accelerator program to implement those features. Wysa is also working with Amazon’s subsidiary AWS to add voice capabilities. Finally, it received a grant from the Google Assistant Fund to expand its voice capabilities.
“Wysa was built to make these social determinants of health irrelevant – ensuring ‘license-free’ access to mental health, where anyone with a smartphone has access to high-quality early support; anytime, anywhere,” Vempati said . “We hope that one day a free version of Wysa will be available in every language so that anyone with access to computer or smartphone an opportunity to improve their mental health. “
Photo: SIphotography, Getty Images
