{"id":338788,"date":"2017-04-20T03:00:06","date_gmt":"2017-04-19T19:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1475330"},"modified":"2017-04-20T03:00:06","modified_gmt":"2017-04-19T19:00:06","slug":"kip-is-using-data-to-make-therapy-better-for-both-patients-and-therapists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/kip-is-using-data-to-make-therapy-better-for-both-patients-and-therapists\/","title":{"rendered":"Kip is using data to make therapy better for both patients and therapists"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

I started going to therapy about five years ago, and it was quite possibly the best decision I ever made. But at times, it was difficult to determine how much progress I was making on a week-to-week or even month-to-month basis.<\/p>\n

Kip<\/a>\u00a0seeks to change that by connecting its users with qualified therapists and helping them track outcomes\u00a0over time. By combining in-person therapy with a mobile app that allows patients to provide feedback on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis, the company believes it can improve the process for patients and therapists.<\/p>\n

I spent much of the last several years doing a traditional form of talk therapy, which helped to work through\u00a0relationship and work-related issues. But it took years of weekly sessions to unspool my personal history and\u00a0determine how events in the past would affect how\u00a0I react to current situations\u00a0and interact with others, and to adjust my thinking around them.<\/p>\n

In contrast, Kip is focused on evidence-based strategies like\u00a0cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)<\/a> and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT)<\/a>, where patients work toward specific goals and outcomes can be tracked over time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re making therapy better because we\u2019re giving therapists more data,\u201d Kip co-founder Erin Frey told me.\u00a0\u201cWe saw that in order to make real changes in the process, we needed to change things from the ground up.\u201d<\/p>\n

To figure\u00a0out\u00a0how\u00a0well a therapist\u2019s\u00a0approach is\u00a0working, Kip provides patients with a mobile app through which they provide daily and weekly updates on their\u00a0progress. That data gets shared with therapists, who can use it to adjust course as necessary.<\/p>\n

As someone who is seeking to overcome a certain amount of anxiety and depression \u2014 and really, what human isn\u2019t dealing with some amount of anxiety or depression \u2014 I answer a series of questions each week that tackle how much and how often those feelings impacted me over the\u00a0previous several days.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a daily questionnaire that just asks for my general\u00a0mood, through which I\u00a0can give an update on any major happenings on a day-to-day basis. And the system is customizable, allowing therapists to track other aspects of a patient\u2019s life. For example: I\u2019m trying to reduce my caffeine intake, so the app asks me to input how much coffee I\u2019ve had over the course of a day.<\/p>\n

Generally speaking, progress is never linear, but by tracking this data over time, Kip can create a trend line for a person\u2019s well-being over time. \u201cTherapists are professional debuggers of your brain\u2026 The more info they have, the more they can talk about and\u00a0the better they can guide a\u00a0session,\u201d Frey said.<\/p>\n

The tools they provide to therapists go beyond just the patient\u2019s app and the data it collects. In addition to\u00a0providing a platform for tracking patient data, it also provides a place for therapists to add their own notes over time.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the reasons quality is so variable is that therapists don\u2019t have easy tools to track outcomes,\u201d Kip co-founder Ti Zhao told me.\u00a0The belief is that doing so will make therapists more efficient with their time and help them to serve more clients better.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mental health is a space that more startups are becoming interested in, and there are already a number\u00a0of mobile-only therapy apps out there. Most\u00a0aim to connect people with therapists they can text\u00a0or do video sessions with,\u00a0enabling therapists to serve more patients and allowing patients to have more active communication with their therapists.<\/p>\n

Kip isn\u2019t seeking to replace or supplant in-person therapy sessions with its app.\u00a0As Frey points out, there are non-verbal cues and mannerisms therapists\u00a0rely on while assessing patients that are difficult to pick up on through video chats and impossible to see in text-only interactions.<\/p>\n

That said, Kip does allow users to share their thoughts with their therapist in-between sessions, and allows therapists to respond. It also is a way for patients to note things that they\u2019d like to talk about the next time they meet their therapists. After all, the recency bias of \u201cwhat happened today or yesterday\u201d can too often\u00a0consume more time in therapy sessions than more significant events that happened earlier in the week and might not be top of mind.<\/p>\n

Kip is\u00a0currently focused on serving patients in the Bay Area, and at $165 per session it\u2019s not cheap. The company is also sidestepping a lot of the headaches that come with accepting\u00a0insurance and connecting\u00a0patients with therapists that get paid through the platform. The hope, though, is that as it grows over time the company will be able to show that its therapy is more efficient than methods using less data.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"\" Kip connects patients with qualified therapists, and helps them track outcomes over time. By combining in-person therapy with a mobile app that allows patients to provide feedback on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis, the company believes it can improve the process for patients and therapists. Read More<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

\"\"\/ <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5817,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[59,66,26],"class_list":["post-338788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-media","tag-techcrunch","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5817"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338788\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}