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Cole Smith, a St. Petersburg-based entrepreneur, has created an AI platform that enhances the therapy experience for both therapists and patients. Opal, which launched this year, was a passion project from the beginning.
As a student at New York University, Smith saw the positive effects of therapy firsthand and desired to make high-quality mental health care more accessible.
Opal’s software is not just an AI scribe or note taker; it interacts with patients, giving them a space to share whatever they want, whenever they want.
They can speak or type on the platform at any hour of the day, and everything they write or speak will be sent to their therapist.
The AI tool responds with friendly, approachable dialogue, encouraging patients to express their thoughts. Smith compares it to talking to a trusted friend.
Opal is also a full client management platform that creates patient profiles and keeps an up-to-date record about the patient’s mental wellness journey.
It can capture audio recordings of sessions and create summary notes. The platform can additionally write briefings to refresh therapists about current talking points before a session. Opal can also give patients automated assessments.
The ultimate goal is to encourage progress, during and after sessions.
Smith explained that creating the right treatment plans for patients can be complex and cause provider burnout. Opal was designed to help therapists give the best possible care to their patients while saving them valuable time.
“This is the active ingredient in therapy,” he said. “It’s called a therapeutic alliance.”
Providers can use all the insights collected by the software to help tailor treatment plans while patients can feel they are heard 24/7. This, in turn, strengthens the relationship between patient and therapist and helps build stronger therapeutic connections.
“It’s there to help you feel better in the moment like you’re supported, but the real healing happens when you’re in that journey with a provider, with a therapist, with somebody that can walk it with you, and this is there to walk alongside you both,” Smith explained.
While Opal is a tool for therapists, Smith hopes it’s a comfort to patients as well.
“It’s not there to sit as a replacement, but it’s rather to sit as an extension of [a patient’s therapist],” he said. “It’s there to be there at 3 in the morning when you’re going through a difficult time or you have a difficult thought that you want to work on, and you want your provider to know at the end of the day.
“It’s there when your provider has many other clients that they may be seeing at that very moment. It allows that sort of support to extend into everyday life.”
Smith, who comes from a machine learning and artificial intelligence background, believes that AI is an invaluable tool that can improve the overall mental health journey experience.
When designing Opal, security was of the essence. The platform is HIPAA compliant and deletes recordings as soon as transcripts are written. All interactions follow therapeutic guidelines to ensure the safety and privacy of patients, he added.
Patients can be walked through the process before starting to use Opal as well.
Smith has a big vision for Opal’s future, to develop a product that helps people through every stage of their healing journey, from choosing a therapist to post-therapy.
One of the most important steps is taking the initiative to explore therapy, and he wants the platform to support patients as they make that critical step.
“I want to make that process so much easier,” he explained. “Finding the right therapist the first time, helping people feel supported before they even have a therapist, helping people realize if therapy is right for them – today this is very very difficult, I’ve gone through it myself.”
Smith recently participated in the Techstars AI Health Baltimore accelerator program, sponsored by Johns Hopkins University and CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield. This, he said, helped Opal get contracts with major telehealth platforms.
This content provided in partnership with StPeteCatalyst.com