Grow Therapy, a hybrid mental health provider, is introducing AI-powered journaling to help patients reflect between therapy sessions.
The announcement marks the first time the company is offering journaling. Patients can respond to a number of prompts, which can help the task feel less overwhelming, executives say. Afterward, the AI helps generate a brief list of key themes. Those summaries can be edited or deleted by the patients, who have the option to share them with their provider.
“Identifying things you want to talk about in therapy can actually be really challenging,” Prabha Dublish, Grow’s staff product manager, told Fierce Healthcare. Patients might be busy, and being able to remember and distill complex reflections in a visit is a big ask, she added. “We really saw AI as an enabler here.”
The approach puts patients in the driver’s seat, allowing them to choose what to share with their provider before their next appointment. “Client autonomy is really important to us,” Dublish noted. To assure quality, Grow is looking at both human review and AI-driven auto evaluation to rate the quality of the journaling summaries.
Though entries shared with providers are not automatically stored in the medical record, patients do have access to their journaling history. The journaling feature can be accessed in Grow’s portal, an intentional choice given that patients are already familiar with using the platform for other things. Grow is sending patients reminders to journal ahead of sessions.
From a provider standpoint, “you’re trying to make the most of the session time that you have,” Matt Scult, PhD, Grow’s principal of clinical product, told Fierce Healthcare. “Things like this can help orient the provider to quickly and succinctly identify, OK, here’s a topic or theme that’s come up this week.”
The feature has been live for a few weeks. Early feedback suggests patients are eager to share their insights with providers. Therapists benefit from receiving timely, meaningful context without being overwhelmed by entire entries. Patients who remain engaged between sessions may have better outcomes, and some evidence suggests journaling is a way to do that.
“A lot of providers incorporate some element of journaling as part of homework, and a lot of clients will often journal on their own,” Scult said. “If we can use this as a feature to help support that process, between session engagement… it’s going to be likely to help improve those clinical outcomes that we’re looking for.”
This is not Grow’s first foray into AI summarization and builds on the company’s existing investments in tech tools. Earlier this year, it launched ambient listening, offering therapists structured drafts of notes and patient visit summaries. The tool has a 50% adoption rate among Grow providers, who report it helps them be more present in sessions and reduce their administrative burden.