IBM's Watson Partners with Talkspace to Assist in Picking A Therapist

NEW YORK, May 11, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Talkspace (www.talkspace.com), the global online therapy platform that helps people connect with licensed therapists, announced a partnership with IBM Watson to leverage its cognitive computing engine in order to improve the delivery of mental health treatment. In this partnership, Talkspace will be teaching Watson psychology, leveraging its world renowned Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology to create a self-learning system that will support the clinical decision making capabilities of therapists treating patients on the Talkspace platform.

"One in four Americans will suffer from a mental health issue this year and we have to develop smarter ways to deliver quality care to the millions of people who don't have access," said Oren Frank, co-founder and CEO of Talkspace. "IBM's leadership in NLP and Watson's unrivaled ability to analyze and make sense of structured and unstructured data makes it a perfect fit for Talkspace. By developing a clinical Q&A system and a therapist decision support system, Watson will be greatly assisting and potentially, revolutionizing the treatment of people suffering from depression, anxiety, PTSD and more."

IBM Watson's Personality Insights API uses linguistic analytics to understand personality and social characteristics based on Big Five needs and Values, from text. To improve the delivery of mental health treatment, Talkspace's integration of the Personality Insights API will enable therapists with verbal cues from conversations to make more informed decisions about each user's personality, thinking style and emotional stress to connect them with the best therapist to provide treatment. Watson's natural language processing, hypothesis generation, and evidence-based learning capabilities allow it to function as an "assistant therapist" for Talkspace—one that can improve itself with each new correspondence.

"Watson's technology will allow us to deliver better mental health care treatment to millions of people," said Nicole Amesbury, LMHC and Head of Clinical Development at Talkspace. "For the first time, therapists will have access to powerful tools that can analyze and extract key insights about a client's mental state. This is transformative for the way therapy is practiced today and we are excited to work alongside Watson to help people lead happier lives."

IBM Watson's partnership with Talkspace is among the first time that the Watson will be involved in both the medical diagnosis process and the identification of treatment options for pre-diagnosed patients. In joining IBM Watson's Partner Ecosystem, Talkspace will be contributing enormously to the advancement of mental health treatment across online and real-world practices.

About Talkspace

Talkspace is a global online therapy platform that connects people with licensed therapists anytime, anywhere. Founded in 2012 with a mission to make therapy more affordable and accessible for all, Talkspace introduced Unlimited Messaging Therapy (™) to provide unprecedented on-demand access to a therapist for only $25 per week. By eliminating the stigma, fear, anxiety and cost associated with traditional therapy, Talkspace is making it easy for millions of people to finally be proactive about their mental health. In the United States alone, Talkspace has amassed over 100,000 members with hundreds of licensed therapists in its network.

For more information, please visit http://www.talkspace.com.

IBM Watson: Pioneering a New Era of Computing 

IBM Watson enhances, scales and accelerates human expertise, and represents a new era of computing in which apps and systems interact with human users more naturally, augment knowledge with Big Data insights, and learn and improve over time. Fueled by innovation and a mission to transform industries and professions, IBM is delivering a range of cloud-based products and services to clients in industries such as banking, healthcare, insurance, retail and education. In January 2014, IBM launched the IBM Watson unit, a business dedicated to developing and commercializing cloud-delivered cognitive computing technologies. The move signified a strategic shift by IBM to deliver a new class of software, services and apps that think, improve by learning, and discover insights from massive amounts of Big Data. IBM is investing $1 billion into the Watson unit, focusing on development and research, and bringing cloud-delivered cognitive applications and services to market. This includes $100 million available for venture investments that support IBM's ecosystem of start-ups and businesses building cognitive apps powered by Watson.

About IBM Watson

For more information on IBM Watson, visit: www.ibmwatson.com. Check out the IBM Watson press kit at: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/presskit/27297.wss 

To join the social discussion about Watson, include the hashtag #ibmwatson. Follow Watson on Facebook and see Watson on YouTube and Flickr.

SOURCE Talkspace