In this episode, we speak to a luminary in the field of mental health. Dr. Tom Insel is the executive chair at Vanna Health, former executive at Verily, and former director of the National Institute of Mental Health. 

Dr. Insel begins by putting the current AI revolution in context, calling this the fourth wave of mental health innovation – the previous waves being pharmaceuticals, followed by genomic advances, and (most recently) digital mental health technology innovations. According to Tom, the impact of AI in mental health will be immense, but we still have basic problems to solve like streamlining operational tasks for mental health providers. 

Dr. Insel and host Anmol Madan go on to discuss the fundamental challenges before AI models can augment or replace human therapists, including safety and clinical efficacy requirements. We discuss opportunities for AI models to use passive data for early diagnosis (an approach Anmol helped invent during his PhD research).

Perhaps most controversially, Tom and Anmol then explore challenges in access, public health, and policy that are not going to be solved by AI and technology, such as homelessness. Tom highlights recent increases in suicide rates and other structural healthcare challenges that get in the way of technology and AI adoption. 

Mentioned In This Episode:

• Rising US Suicide Rates Data
• More info about Dr. Tom Insel

About Our Guest:

Tom lnsel, M.D., a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, has been a national leader in mental health research, policy, and technology. From 2002-2015, Dr. Insel served as Director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). More recently, he led the Mental Health Team at Verily (2015-2017); co-founded Mindstrong Health (2017-2019), a start-up building tools for people with serious mental illness; and served as a special advisor to California Governor Gavin Newsom (2019), helping on behavioral health issues. In 2020, he co-founded Humanest Care, a therapeutic online community for recovery. In 2022, he joined Vanna Health as a co-founder and executive chair. Vanna Health is a start-up helping people with serious mental illness engage in psychosocial supportive care. He currently serves on the boards of Fountain House and th

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Autonomous Health is...
Produced & Hosted by: Anmol Madan
Edited by: Losa Amara Meru
Marketing: Erin Garcia Miller

About Your Host:
Anmol Madan is an entrepreneur, computer scientist, and executive who has been leading the digital health and AI revolution over the past two decades. Anmol has co-founded or held executive roles at multiple unicorns in the emerging field of digital healthcare; a field which has existed for less than two decades. His professional contributions in the field have received hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from leading VCs, and been featured in such media as CNBC, New York Times, Washington Post, and Wired Magazine. His scientific contributions have been published in dozens of scientific articles in leading computer science and digital health journals, and led to over 30 issued and pending US patents.
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