- Care providers' cultural attunement deficiency is a historic
mental health care barrier for racial and ethnic minority
communities, while bias remains a top pain point for healthcare
AI
- Conversational AI visionary mpathic is building culturally
competent AI models for more equitable mental healthcare delivery,
rooted in part in Wave's inclusive provider-patient transcripts
- NIH SBIR's mission is to cultivate diverse ideas and strive
to empower scientists and entrepreneurs to bring their discoveries
to patients
BELLEVUE, Wash., July 11,
2024 /PRNewswire/ -- mpathic, a leader in AI-powered
actionable conversation analytics specializing in healthcare, life
sciences, and client services, today announced it has received a
highly competitive National Institutes of Health Small Business
Innovation Research (SBIR) award for its transformative project
"Empathy for Everyone: Generative AI that Improves Patient-Provider
Cultural Attunement in Real Time."
NIH, the nation's medical research agency, offers SBIR grants to
innovative small healthcare and life sciences businesses to perform
research and development to make medical breakthroughs that can be
deployed to the masses. This grant will fund the expansion of
mpathic's generative AI tools to facilitate cultural attunement
between mental health providers and patients, bridge the gap in
mental healthcare for underserved racial and ethnic populations,
and potentially improve therapeutic outcomes and patient
satisfaction.
America's mental healthcare system is failing people of color.
Racial and ethnic minority communities report higher rates of
mental illness compared to white and privileged communities.
Marginalized communities are also less likely to seek treatment,
less likely to find or access high-quality care, and less likely to
finish treatment, with 30-57% of patients prematurely leaving.
These same communities often feel that mental health clinicians
lack cultural attunement - where a clinician is understanding and
responsive to the intersection of societal context, culture, and
power of the patient's lived experience, and are ill-equipped to
respond to their mental health needs in an empathetic and affirming
manner. Cultural attunement has been shown to be the driving factor
that retains racial and ethnic minorities in mental healthcare.
Many digital health innovations are intended to improve
patient-clinician relationships and the overall patient experience,
including AI-powered technologies such as chatbots and ambient AI
assistants. Unfortunately, many fall far short in closing care
gaps. Male-dominant hetero-white language is the internet's most
prevalent language and is the foundation for widely used health
technology AI models. This has led to a proliferation of AI
innovations that are racist, sexist, and genderist when interacting
with patients.
mpathic realizes that all mental health providers must be
equipped with tools that address cultural attunement and health
disparities, and it's course-correcting the racial and ethnic bias
prevalent in mental health AI models. mpathic is the first company
of its kind to build a conversational analytics platform to detect
and correct for cultural attunement in real time with natural
language processing (NLP) and generative artificial intelligence
(AI) technologies. mpathic is utilizing Wave's provider-patient
appointment transcripts to build its AI model.
"For too long, mental health care has not adequately considered
the cultural context of patients," shared Dr. Grin Lord, CEO and
founder of mpathic. "With AI assistance that brings the best
expertise in cultural attunement to any provider, we can create
more meaningful and effective interventions that respect cultural
nuances."
mpathic will employ AI and NLP processing on conversational data
from 300 30-minute health coaching sessions from Wave to improve
cultural attunement in real-time provider-patient interactions.
Wave delivers personalized virtual mental health care through
a combination of an app-based digital experience and certified
mental health coaches. Wave's inclusive design processes and
equitable hiring practices have supported an 85% non-white,
non-male and non-straight team of therapists, coaches and care
navigators, lending itself to an equally diverse user population
and coaching session transcript data.
"Our collaboration with mpathic on this project is not just
about technological innovation; it's a step towards true access to
mental health care that recognizes and adapts to the diversity of
human culture," said Dr. Sarah
Adler, founder & CEO of Wave. "It's about creating tools
that enable us to see each patient more fully and meet them where
they are, with respect, humility, and understanding."
The SBIR Phase I project is headed by a team of experts in
psychology and technology, including Alison
Cerezo, Ph.D., Grin Lord, Psy.D., Amber Jolley-Paige, Ph.D., Jay Palat, M.S., and Tad
Hirsch, Ph.D., at mpathic, alongside collaborators
Sarah Adler, Ph.D., and Alison Pickover, Ph.D., from Wave.
"This SBIR award is a significant milestone for mpathic and
speaks to our team's innovative spirit and dedication," said Dr.
Alison Cerezo, SVP of Research &
Health Equity at mpathic. "Through the research, we aim not only to
improve mental health outcomes but to ensure that our mental health
systems are equitable, inclusive, and responsive to the needs of
all individuals, particularly those from marginalized
communities."
About mpathic
mpathic is a trusted leader in actionable conversation analytics,
empowering healthcare, life sciences, and client services leaders
to deliver exceptional care and engagement. Using proprietary ML
models developed and trained on over a decade of scientific
validation, with up to seven times the accuracy of human doctors,
mpathic objectively detects, corrects and improves 200 plus
behaviors, establishing an unrivaled level of assurance. To learn
more, visit www.mpathic.ai.
About Wave
Wave delivers personalized, virtual mental
health care to help members navigate the highs and lows of daily
life, with evidence-based solutions and science-backed care plans.
Combining an app-based digital experience with mental health
coaches certified by the National Board for Health & Wellness
Coaching and trained in its proprietary, evidence-based mental
health model, Wave has demonstrated significant reductions in acute
depression, anxiety and stress. The company's stepped care model,
which delivers and monitors mental health treatment so that the
most effective, yet least resource intensive treatment, is
delivered first, also includes access to licensed therapists when
clinically appropriate. To learn more, visit www.wavelife.io.
Media Contact
Kristina
Kroot
Director of Marketing
mpathic
kristina@mpathic.ai
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SOURCE mpathic