No therapist is going to be a perfect match for every patient, and finding the therapist that’s right for you oftentimes boils down to hopping from session to session until you’re either comfortable or tired of searching. However, a new text-based therapy platform known as Talkspace wants to make the process easier by pairing you with an optimal therapist right from the get-go, and it’s doing this using IBM’s artificially intelligent supercomputer: Watson.
Gone are the days of physically taking yourself to a new therapist and hoping it’s a good match. IBM is working with text therapy startup Talkspace to help find the best therapist for you within its list of online counseling specialists. But it could also help the IBM Watson supercomputer to make clinical decisions in the future. Talkspace is a text-based therapy platform that aims to reach more than 45 million people who are diagnosed with mental health issues each year. The platform allows users to send an unlimited number of anonymous messages to a therapist through an iOS app or on the web. IBM’s Watson supercomputer will power the Talkspace app as it seeks to find what it believes will be a good therapist to fit your needs. By evaluating the anonymous text messages sent by its users to evaluating counselors, Talkspace believes it will be able to gain insights about users’ personality, thinking style and emotional stress.