Rogers Behavioral Health, a national nonprofit provider of mental health and addiction services, is incorporating a third-party AI-based virtual assistant to navigate more patients to care.
Rogers is working with Limbic, a maker of clinical AI tools for mental healthcare, to offer Limbic Access—an AI chatbot that screens prospective patients into care pathways. The tool is just one option and does not replace diagnostic or screening tools nor does it replace clinicians. Instead, it aims to offer another scalable treatment access point for potential patients.
The chatbot will be a 24/7 addition to Rogers’ site. A link to the assessment can even be provided to Rogers’ call centers in case patients who call in want to fill the assessment out that way. The evaluations go straight into the electronic health record system, the company said. A traditional way of getting into care, such as a phone call, may not be the best option for patients for a number of reasons, from anxiety to stigma, Rogers argues.
“We’re committed to expanding access to our effective, evidence-based mental health and addiction treatment,” Cindy Meyer, Rogers’ CEO and president, said in a press release. “This AI tool offers our patients one more way to get the care they deserve to live more fulfilling, enriched lives.”
The tool, built by Ph.D.s using evidence-based guidelines, has been deployed by the National Health Service (NHS) in the U.K. Limbic Access is transparent with users that it is a robot. Still, it is highly personalized and empathetic, Limbic argues, making it an approachable and stigma-free way to get patients into care. To prepare for the rollout, the companies partnered in order to educate Rogers providers on what the tool is and what it has been trained on.
“We chose Limbic after thoroughly looking at what was out there,” Signa Meyers, vice president of strategic initiatives at Rogers Behavioral Health, told Fierce Healthcare. “We were impressed with the quality of the published research and the volume of behavioral health patients they had already worked with through the product.”
Rogers treats adults, children and teens with a range of disorders including mood disorders, eating disorders, addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder. It has brick-and-mortar locations in 10 states and operates inpatient behavioral health hospitals, residential programs and centers offering intensive treatment programs.
Traditional mental health intakes often use patient-reported outcome questionnaires like the PHQ9 and GAD7. These tools, while useful for tracking symptoms, are limited, the companies argue. They do not capture all the biopsychosocial complexities that make up a clinician-led psychiatric assessment. And, given the range of mental health conditions that exist, multiple questionnaires may be needed for a holistic picture of a patient. That can be a lengthy process that patients do not complete.
Limbic’s tool conducts the initial assessment, cutting the time needed for providers to do so to less than 30 minutes. It identifies the most likely presenting issues with 93% accuracy, executives said, allowing the measures to be more targeted. The tool can do a comprehensive intake in 15 minutes.
“By combining depth with efficiency, Limbic provides a personalized, thorough assessment that far surpasses the capabilities of traditional tools,” Ross Harper, Limbic’s co-founder and CEO, told Fierce Healthcare.
Limbic’s tool is also equipped with safety protocols that monitor patient interactions in real time around the clock. If a patient indicates they are in crisis, Limbic can flag them to a care team, offer vetted resources and let the person call a local crisis support line immediately.
“Limbic’s clinical AI presents the opportunity to enhance risk management within a patient population,” Harper noted.
Limbic Care provides timely, contextual support for patients, “with all the empathy and engagement of gen AI, but integrated within the treatment plan,” he added. It features on-demand conversational support and guided activities built on a given treatment plan and a patient’s current status.
Based on 129,000 patients in treatment, Limbic was found to notably increase referral rates into care in a Nature Medicine study. The chatbot led to a 15% rise in overall referrals, a 179% increase in nonbinary individuals and a 29% increase among ethnic minorities. The AI’s anonymity and personalization have been key in improving accessibility, the study found.
A separate real-world observational study demonstrated Limbic Access reduced clinical assessment times by an average of 12.7 minutes, reduced wait times for clinical assessments (2.2 days shorter) and lowered dropout rates from 27% to 22%. It also improved patient recovery rates among those using the tool.
Limbic has also published data around how it lowers the cost per recovery. Among more than 58,400 patients in 18 care services using Limbic in the U.K., Limbic Access had an estimated cost per additional recovery ranging from 118 pounds sterling to 221 pounds, while alternative methods incurred costs up to 1,014% higher.
Limbic began in the U.K. and was the first and only AI chatbot to earn the Class IIa, considered to be low/medium risk, medical device status, the company claims. The software is used in over 40% of NHS talk therapy services. The company believes using domain-specific models like those that detect cognitive distortions is what enables the success of LLM-based systems. To that end, it aims to hire domain experts in psychology, computational psychiatry, neuroscience, cognitive science and machine learning to work on its model.