Dr Andrew Welchman on AI for Good: How can AI improve mental health for 100 million people?

Dr Andrew Welchman, Executive Vice President for Impact at ieso, recently appeared on AI for Good’s Health Discovery series to explore how artificial intelligence can improve mental health for 100 million people within 5 years.

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The webinar describes the recent history of mental health as a challenge in three acts: stigma, access and quality, and the multifaceted approach to improving mental health.

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ieso has approached the mental health challenge through one-to-one text-based cognitive behavioural therapy via an AI-enabled platform. Andrew Welchman revealed one of the reasons why the platform has been successful is because people can do online therapy in their own home, discreetly. He explains, “the fact that they [patients] don’t need to say things out loud and don’t need to see the person that they’re working with for their therapy can actually be helpful in disclosing more and getting to the deeper roots of the problem.”

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The pandemic signified a shift in the delivery of mental health. As Andrew Welchman mentions, “when covid hit, we went from about 7% of therapy being delivered online to over 90% of therapy being delivered online within a matter of months”.

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Impactful and effective change in mental health begins by applying analytics to real-world clinical data. ieso are taking this one step further by examining how we can responsibly harness a range of AI applications to improve mental healthcare, whilst listening to those with lived experience for new and innovative patient-centric solutions.

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Read AI for Good’s blog on it here: https://aiforgood.itu.int/how-can-ai-improve-mental-health-for-100-million-people/