Solome Tibebu Interviews Our Founder: Five Key Takeaways
Founder and President Alison Darcy, PhD, sat down with Solome Tibebu, founder and host of the Going Digital Behavioral Health Tech (GDBHT) conference for a discussion on creating digital mental health tools that are scalable and engaging. The interview took place earlier this month at the annual GDBHT conference. Key points and the full recorded interview are below.
On being there in the moment of need and over the course of a lifetime
Our data suggest that people have the longest conversations with Woebot between 2 and 5 AM. Until now, there’s been very little that somebody could do at that time to get help or assistance, stay grounded, and stop the negative spiral.
But there’s another unique opportunity when you build a technology that, first and foremost, anchors on a relationship: Woebot can be there for people across the lifespan, not just in a crisis. It can be integrated into somebody’s life, continuously shifting to what is going on with that person, and then learning from that person over time.
On how Woebot Health partners with organizations
We partner with health systems and health plans, for whom scale and clinical rigor is really important in evaluating digital mental health technology. When we come together with a partner, we work to understand where they’re seeing the unmet need, where we can embed Woebot into their existing care journeys, and how Woebot can complement their primary care and behavioral health teams and ecosystem of tools.
On how Woebot Health uses artificial intelligence
We use artificial intelligence in various ways, but always in combination with deep clinical expertise and for the purpose of delivering a more tailored service. Machine learning techniques allow users to share what they’re experiencing in their own words and facilitate Woebot’s deep understanding of their needs. This allows us to be precise about offering the therapeutic techniques that will best help the person with what they’re dealing with in the actual moment that they’re going through it.
What we don’t do is use AI to generate what Woebot says. Everything Woebot says is written by a team of clinical writers and clinical experts.
On the importance of bond in a therapeutic relationship
Much of the work that is done in a therapeutic setting depends on how well you have a working alliance. We measure that with the scale called the working alliance inventory of which bond is a subscale along with task and goal. We gave the working alliance inventory to 36,000 of our users and discovered that Woebot was able to establish a therapeutic bond with users that was non-inferior to the bond seen between human therapists and their patients. That bond was established quickly, within three to five days of an initial conversation, which is significant because what we really seek in excellent psychotherapy is a fast response, a positive shift in symptoms as quickly as possible.
Many digital tools simply replicate principles from online learning–they teach people things in a one-size-fits-all approach. That hasn’t led to very good engagement because only the most motivated people are able to complete the program. We found that a relational agent with the ability to deeply hear what someone is sharing, meet them where they’re at with understanding and non-judgment, and then offer a curated toolset that is truly targeting what they’re dealing with opens up more potential for therapeutic value, some actual therapeutic potency.
On Woebot Health’s commitment to science
Being grounded in science was a major principle on which I founded the company. There are thousands of apps in app stores that claim to have some mental health benefits, but if the field is going to be sustainable, they really need to prove they work as well. It’s not necessarily the shortest road. It takes time to do the randomized controlled trials. We’ve had four published to date, with many more in the pipeline as well as many other published papers.
