The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Technology Transfer, Phase I project is to help make therapy more consistent with patient preferences, beliefs, and values to maximize engagement in therapy and improve patient outcomes. Therapy for mental health problems is highly effective, yet many patients drop out before getting the full benefit because they are not satisfied or engaged in the therapy. Therapist Assisted Online (TAO) provides an array of tools for online psychotherapy including educational materials, homework on mobile devices, video conferencing with a therapist, and weekly monitoring of progress.
The proposed project involves collecting data on all of patients? actions in the TAO system along with their ratings of each activity and their symptom improvement over time. The research and development team will use this data to create a machine learning system that will make suggestions for best next steps in therapy based on what thousands of other users experienced. This is the intelligent counseling system. It will work very similarly to movie streaming services or online book sellers who recommend movies or books to you based on a person?s past preferences and the preferences of thousands of other users.
