Dr. Sherry Benton knows firsthand how inaccessible mental healthcare can be. In 2012, while serving as director of the University of Florida’s Counseling Center, Benton and her colleagues were swamped by the number of students seeking treatment. She couldn’t stand to see them suffering.
"It was intolerable,” she said. “If you make a student wait four or five weeks to get effective treatment for depression, they're going to lose out on their whole semester."
As they watched the waitlist grow, they decided they had to try something different and created a set of online educational modules for students suffering from anxiety to turn to. Instead of hour-long face-to-face sessions once per month, students could connect with counselors for 15-minute video conferences once per week. The online tools provided support. The outcomes from these “low-intensity, high-engagement” sessions were promising. So promising, in fact, that in 2014 Benton founded a company called TAO Connect to bring the method to the masses.
Over the past few years, TAO Connect has expanded into an online suite of behavioral health tools, including some 400 videos and hundreds of interactive exercises powered by artificial intelligence. The goal is to reduce the per-patient cost for effective treatment, improve outcomes and increase access to mental healthcare.
Short for Therapy Assistance Online, TAO is designed as a resource for people with mental and behavioral health issues, whether or not they’re seeking face-to-face counseling.
“We don't want to take the place of someone’s therapist,” Benton said.
Rather, TAO provides support outside of one-on-one therapy sessions. Users are presented with a list of recommended exercises related to their condition. They’re encouraged to follow the suggestions or participate in exercises that they and their therapist have deemed beneficial. Engagement is at their own discretion.
Benton likens the system to the way Netflix recommends movies. “It's less prescriptive and more suggestive,” she said. That is, patients have options. “We find that most people don't like mandates without having any flexibility.”
TAO’s roughly 150 customers include colleges and universities, private practices, provincial health services in Canada and employee assistance programs in the United States and Australia. The St. Petersburg company employs 18 people full-time. It has raised $3.5 million in investment from groups like New World Angels, Florida Angels Network and Florida Funders, and $1.4 million in grants from the National Science Foundation. TAO declined to disclose its revenue.
However, Benton said sales have doubled annually since the company launched commercially in July 2015. That doesn’t mean she expects smooth sailing ahead. TAO was relatively unique when it started out but now faces competition in a crowded market of AI-powered mental health tools that has already seen a couple of its competitors go under.
How does TAO plan to survive and thrive the fray?
For one thing, the company will continue to emphasize customer service. Benton boasted about TAO’s 90 percent renewal rates and high customer satisfaction. And she said they’ll continue refining their user interface and experience.
“You can never be done with your software when you're doing things digitally,” she said, evoking another Netflix reference. “If you don't keep building and innovating, you're going to be the next Blockbuster Video.”
