| Very cool! I worked on an app-based CBT startup for a number of years. The core business problem is that adherence to self-guided CBT of any sort (workbooks, apps, etc) is super low compared to in-person therapy. We solved this by having a live non-therapist "coach" to call you periodically and encourage clients to continue through the program. That set a lower bound on how much we could charge users, and made our product too expensive for consumers. We were eventually forced to switch to the employer market, with mild success before we ran out of money and soft-landed. It's promising to hear that you've landed on the employer market earlier than we did, but honestly you might have luck in the consumer space. Since your cost per user is pretty low, you could potentially get the app subscription down to something workable for the average person without dealing with insurance. I think you're probably still going to run into the core problem, though: engaging people. I think you're making the right call to stick with predictable chatbots, but I suspect you'll lose some of the engagement you'd get with a more advanced bot. I always wondered how Woebot got around that. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Another thing to watch out for: you'll have constant pressure to drift away from the science – to build something that consumers like, but is not well-supported and/or hurts efficacy. Fight it! Keep evidence-based medicine in your core values. Lean on your clinical director for content review. It's too easy to build a feel-good, do-nothing app, I hope you can stick to your evidence-based convictions long-term. :) Anyway, best of luck! Software-delivered CBT is a super promising field and I wish you the best. :) |
In terms of drifting away from evidence based approaches, that's definitely a risk and a temptation for everyone in this space, and links to some of the other commenters fears here as well. It's a slippery slope we're well aware of and which we don't want to slide down.