Hello, I’m Dr. Roger Gould.

Psychiatrist, former head of outpatient psychiatry at UCLA,
and founder chairman of Digital Therapy, Inc.
Honored by the Smithsonian as a pioneer in digital therapy.

Digital Therapy, Inc.

Building the AI version of Digital Therapy – a digital therapist

TIME IS NOW! THE DEMAND IS AT AN ALL TIME HIGH

Public health need is urgent and massive. Individuals are desperate for effective therapy, but quality therapists are hard to find and prohibitively expensive.

There are many excellent and useful mental health apps in the market that address the problem, but none claiming to be a digital therapist.

We have already created the first generation state-of-the-art digital therapist component programs over decades through partnership contracts with major healthcare companies: CignaHealthPlan, Johnson and Johnson and IBM Watson.

These programs have been successfully and safely used in hospital and outpatient settings by 100,000 patients, demonstrate health outcomes comparable to or surpassing in-person therapy. Patients love using it. They experience therapeutic outcomes they were empowered to make happen with DT, either with a therapist or on their own.

* Studied independently by UCLA/Kaiser and reported in peer reviewed journals, DT used alone without a therapist was determined to be as effective as with an in-person therapist.

* Studied by Managed Health Network, DT with a therapist outperformed traditional therapy by completing a case to patient satisfaction in less time and with better results.

BUT THE STATE OF THE ART IS ABOUT TO CHANGE DRAMATICALLY

The second generation AI driven digital therapy programs are in the works right now. It’s inevitable that the new AI (LLM’S) will soon produce a new form of digital therapy programs. They will be useful, more conversationally rich, and engaging.

BUT

Will they be safe?

Will they be truly therapeutic?

Yes to both questions IF:

The new AI programs are built ON TOP OF a carefully thought through, well-tested and detailed already programmed model that:

  1. Establishes safe guardrails.
  2. Represents the core wisdom of successful psychotherapy.
  3. Truly “knows” the patient every step of the way.
  4. Helps the user discover, practice and learn a new way of thinking to master the conflicts blocking them from becoming the more effective and self-confident agent of their own life going forward.

Our therapeutic models are built and tested to satisfy all four of these requirements for a safe and effective AI driven next generation digital therapist.

Why are our DT programs the right base for the new AI driven programs?

Because we started DT decades ago with the right question; and collaborated with an AI pioneer from Stanford.

Instead of picking any one brand of therapy to digitize, our initial 3 year research project asked: What are the explicit and implicit principles that all therapists teach during a therapy session? And what do patients learn as a result of that?
With that foundation we mapped out highly detailed step-by-step DT programs to help patients:

  • Pinpoint what exactly is bothering them.
  • Discover and articulate their best approach to address what’s bothering them.
  • Identify and understand their resistance to actually taking the action they believe is the correct action to try first.
  • Overcome their resistance to actually doing what they determined they needed to do.

The result is not just relief from symptoms. The patient has changed.

The patient has also learned and practiced a new way to master their fears and worries through a combination of insights and actions. This critical piece of personal development is the often overlooked implicit goal of all therapies.

That’s what therapists teach and that’s what DT helps patients learn.

The prototype for a digital therapist is already built (in partnership with IBM Watson, 2017). It can speak, listen, understand, personalize and stay faithful to the underlying cognitive model of a person struggling with a strong compulsion to binge.

Since then the recent and amazing AI advances enable us to do so much more, better and faster.  We believe we can not only bring that IBM prototype to market, but also build the new broad spectrum “therapist” product based on our core IP (solving the conflicts that  keep a person from making changes and acting with confidence as a more mature and effective agent of their own life), which is the gold standard for successful therapy.

CONTACT TO FIND OUT MORE:

If you are interested in learning more, please contact Roger L. Gould MD, Founder and CEO of DIGITAL THERAPY, INC. dr.roger.gould@digitaltherapy.com