Alexa: "Hey Jack, Are You Feeling OK?"

Can artificial intelligence save lives through early diagnosis, better allocation of resources and better treatment planning for mental health patients?

In the next 12 minutes, someone in the United States will commit suicide. One in five people suffer from depression or anxiety but when someone is feeling hopeless we don't always know how to help.

When I was a young woman, I suffered from depression brought on from an inordinate amount of stress. I was a teenage mom, going to college, working a full time job and getting divorced. One day a friend asked me, "Are you ok? You seem depressed." With help, I became a successful Management Consultant and raised a talented Civil Engineer. I hope our AI assistants - Alexa, Google, Siri, Watson - will learn to be as astute as my friend.

At IBM, an incubator team designed and developed a pilot project with the mission to save lives among U.S. Veterans and give back control of personal privacy. A trusted Watson platform managed a single ID, using Blockchain. An ecosystem of partners enabled trusted transactions with banks, insurers, healthcare providers, retailers and government agencies, adding value for the soldier and his family, resulting in increased loyalty and customer lifetime value.

As Watson learns more about the soldier, it can anticipate his needs and lessen the burden of civilian life. For example, ordering food, staples and clothing to fit his budget or playing music, sports and entertainment to lift his mood. It might even have an appropriate sense of humor. When the system detects out of the ordinary behavior through voice, vision or sensors, it can take action and notify his family or his buddies to reach out to him. With more advanced research, Watson will help healthcare providers diagnose, treat and triage mental health issues, and save lives!

According to Guillermo Cecchi at IBM Research, "In five years, what we say and write will be used as indicators of our mental health and physical well being. IBM is building an automated speech analysis application that runs off a mobile device. By taking approximately one minute of speech input, the system uses text-to-speech, advanced analytics, machine learning, natural language processing technologies and computational biology to provide a real-time, overview of the patient’s mental health."

Read more about IBM Research at this link:

https://www.research.ibm.com/5-in-5/mental-health/