Wysa: mental health AI apps, pricing and hypothesis testing

Health Tech Matters: Talks About Healthcare Products and Design

In this episode, we are discussing how artificial intelligence can be used for mental health treatment, pricing models and hypothesis testing.

Quotes from the episode:

On AI in mental healthcare

I realized that some of the cognitive restructuring exercises that I found in self-help models online were very good. So the initial idea was: "Can we make AI listen, sympathetically?".

When you're typing out what you're feeling, you're accepting that feeling. Then you're learning to say. And Wysa asks some really nice questions "Do you want to get back control in the situation?", "How can you be a good friend to yourself?". It forces you to think about it, but you do all the work.

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On B2B vs B2C healthcare products

My hypothesis is that there is a path because healthcare is so difficult to break into and it takes so long to break into and they want evidence and they want some validation. It's much, much easier to start in B2C.

I know that B2B is easier than B2C. Because you can do an iterative experiment in B2C, which you cannot do in B2B because they need you to have proven everything before they even start working with you. You start in B2C, you get that fast cycle of iteration that a product manager absolutely needs to get their product right. You get to hear directly from the users. You get to hold on to your mission and your sense of purpose, which in B2B really vanishes fast when you're not working directly with users. I think B2C is easier in some ways if you get product-market fit and once B2B takes off, revenue is easier, but getting the product right in B2B is very hard.

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About energy

The construct that we're trying to manage time and there's not enough is such a lie. We are trying to manage energy. And if you have energy, then everything feels good. If you don't have energy, all the time in the world will not yield anything.

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On the future of mental health applications

I'm seeing a convergence of biomarkers where people are tracking their own mental health or physical activity or heart rates and stress levels. So there's definitely a quantified self that is coming into mental health.

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Our guest: Jo Aggarwal - Founder/CEO at Wysa - clinically approved AI chatbot for mental health, 3 million users. Her LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joaggarwal/

Wysa: https://wysa.io/

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How to find me? Maria Borysova, healthcare product designer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maria-borysova/