Maureen Werrbach 00:00:00  How do you see technology shifting the mental health landscape in the next handful of years?

Amity Cooper 00:00:06  I think it is going to totally transform and disrupt our industry beyond what we have imagined. How they can be your right hand assistant in all aspects of your business operations, as well as your clinical assistant. It’s kind of amazing what’s coming on.

Welcome to the Group Practice Exchange Podcast, where we talk about all things related to group practice ownership. I’m your host, Maureen Werrbach. This episode is sponsored by Therapy Notes. Therapy notes is my favorite EHR, and it’s one that I’ve been using in my own group practice since 2014. They’ve got everything you need to be successful in your group practice, and they’re constantly making updates and have live support. If you want two free months of therapy notes, go to Therapynotes.com/r/wordpress-622091-4579657.cloudwaysapps.com.

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Hey everyone welcome to another episode of The Group Practice Exchange Podcast. Today I have Amity Cooper, who’s a seasoned entrepreneur, trained mental health professional and an entrepreneurial coach with me. And we’re going to be talking about something that I don’t think I’ve talked to anyone on the podcast about.

Maureen Werrbach 00:02:38  So I’m really actually excited about this, but we’re going to be talking about how to embrace technology instead of shunning it. And I’m just really excited that you’re able to come on and talk about this.

Amity Cooper 00:02:48  Thank you so much for having me, Maureen. I’m looking forward to the conversation.

Maureen Werrbach 00:02:51  So why talk about this like for you? What is your expertise or background or knowledge on this topic? Because of course it’s something that’s like just coming down the pipeline and becoming more relevant and more popular. And so it’s not something that a lot of people know about or have expertise on.

Amity Cooper 00:03:09  So true. So I’ve been a tinkerer and just anything new tech coming out. And I had to pivot really quickly in my businesses. I’ve been in the business world for the last 20 years, and I could only survive when I was able to be adaptive and learn how to integrate all of these new tools into my businesses so I could survive and thrive. And so when we were forced to go and move from need to need a screen to screen back in 2020, I saw this huge wave coming at us as and in the industry, as health care professionals, mental health providers.

Amity Cooper 00:03:51  We just didn’t know how to do it and we didn’t know how to do it well. And we were often very afraid of what technology was bringing to us. We’re afraid to adapt. And so with that, I responded by setting up a Healing Entrepreneurship Summit, where I invited 16 other professionals in the field of new tech, mental health, and entrepreneurship to sort of discuss these topics. And it was so vivid for me because I knew that I wasn’t alone, and I knew that the listeners out there needed this kind of information to see how they, too, could tackle the challenges of being spread too thin and not enough time in the world, and to help the people that they wanted to serve. And so technology really has been that gateway to opening up and expanding my offerings and my practice, as well as just helping more people. So it’s pretty powerful stuff.

Maureen Werrbach 00:04:48  Yeah. So when you say technology, I know we’re going to be talking about VR specifically. Yeah. And of course, you know, as you mentioned, all of us had to sort of scramble a little bit at the beginning of Covid to get prepared and just comfortable with using technology to provide therapy, but I’m especially intrigued to talk about VR and how you include it in your practice now.

Maureen Werrbach 00:05:13  And just what inspired you to get started on it? Was it just the start of Covid and needing to shift to technology or you know, where that came from?

Amity Cooper 00:05:21  Not specifically. I think I’ve always been a researcher at heart, and I saw that immersive technologies were being utilized in other ways and other fields, or maybe even parallel industries. I mean, we saw mental health gaming have this surge over these last ten years. And then there started to be research that was showing the efficacy of playing for your mental health. And I started to explore that. And first and foremost, I would say I’m a clinician first, but I’m also a product developer and marketer. And I realized that in order to stay relevant and to stay in the game of sorts, I had to figure out a way to bring all of this new technology into my practice and to make it interesting and fun for my clients. And what we have found, and what research has showed us, is that gamification is like a dopamine hit at every point.

Amity Cooper 00:06:24  So, you know, if you can combine working on yourself with doing something that’s fun and engaging, it keeps people in therapy longer. It actually shows that the outcomes are greater and you have a more long lasting effect. And so that’s sort of I put two and two and two together, and I realized that virtual reality is where we’re heading. And it’s important. And it’s a tool for serving others on a greater scale. It makes you more relevant and specialized in your own deliverables of your agency or your private practice. And it’s fun. So why not do it? That’s how I came to it.

Maureen Werrbach 00:07:07  I love that. Can you share with me what that looks like in practice? In your practice? Yeah. Like what does that look like?

Amity Cooper 00:07:13  Okay, so what we see right now, at least out in the field, is that VR interventions, immersive therapies are really, really well researched and validated in the realm of exposure therapy, specifically for phobias, anxiety. We also see it in ways that it’s being used for mindfulness practices.

Amity Cooper 00:07:36  So you have a couple of options. There are online portals learning VR portal platforms that you can subscribe to as both an end user and as a clinician. So the end user would use just a simple $50 virtual headset that you can purchase from a variety of companies. Vive HTC is the one that really comes to mind. It’s lightweight and you just snap in your phone and you can access all the different immersive modalities or scenes that you want, and that could be paid on a subscription service. So that’s great for the end user. But for the clinician, it’s the same sort of thing, but with an extra boost because you’re actually handling and working off of a platform on your laptop that allows you to access and design your own interventions through this particular portal, and that you’re monitoring as you’re working with a particular client. And it could be actually in room, or it could be virtually administered. But you are connected through any sort of like log on portal that you would log into for any other like software system.

Amity Cooper 00:08:54  Right? Okay. So that’s like on the clinical side. So the accessibility is really there. And you can wrap that into your overall service package. And I know that there’s different ways in which you can address that. Some clinicians like to do an upcharge on your initial like everyday sessions. So like maybe you charge an average of $135 for your particular hourly service, but you can upgrade that to saying, hey, and with our VR implementation for your treatment, plan it up to $200 an hour, let’s say, okay. So that’s one way. Yep. So clinically speaking you have that option. But if you were to think about it and put on your marketer’s hat or product development hat or your business owners hat, you can take that service, that VR tool and repurpose and repackage it as a way to differentiate your practice and your services and your programs. So what we’re also seeing, instead of the clinical side, we’re also seeing the tech training tool, like being able to use the VR platform Experience where somebody is the teacher and you’re the student, and you’re actually in a room setting where you’re practicing your therapy skills and you’re in an immersive environment.

Amity Cooper 00:10:19  So you’re getting all this feedback and response to an interaction that you may be having on an online immersive universe, but is that you can practice with. We see this a lot, actually, in the healthcare field, like doctors and nurses are leveling up their bedside manner skills with using VR systems. So if you imagine that this is what I’ve done in my own program. So I teach other clinicians how to open and set up their private practices, and I include a VR headset in that box that they receive, because I want them to practice using this tool so they can become comfortable with it. So there’s multiple ways in which you can brand it, market it, sell it, repurpose it, and you can even create like a subscription model service for it. So it’s really interesting where you can go with all of these tools.

Maureen Werrbach 00:11:15  Yeah, I find it really intriguing and as a practice owner myself really sits in that visionary space where I’m looking and forecasting. Where am I seeing the trends lying in just healthcare as a whole, and likely in mental health care specifically as a way to just be able to pivot and be ahead of any sort of curves that might be coming.

Maureen Werrbach 00:11:38  This has been one of the areas that I’ve been looking into as well, just in terms of knowledge gaining, not necessarily in potential usage, but in awareness and knowledge gain. And, I see like so much in the healthcare industry as a whole that shift to integrating VR. And so I’m kind of guessing that it’s it’s really going to become even more relevant in our industry specifically as the years go. How do you see that? I mean, obviously, it seems like you’ve been kind of looking into this for a few years now. How do you see technology shifting the mental health landscape in the next, you know, a handful of years?

Amity Cooper 00:12:18  I think it.

Amity Cooper 00:12:19  Is going to totally transform and disrupt our industry beyond what we have imagined. I mean, we’ve just seen that since 2022, 23, with the onset and the release of open AI and ChatGPT and now entering and sort of completing 2024 with the onset of generative AI tools, how they can be your right hand assistant in all aspects of your business operations as well as your clinical assistant.

Amity Cooper 00:12:51  It’s kind of amazing what’s coming on, and it is somewhat hard to imagine what our landscape will look like in just a few short years. I mean, I would say by 2030 there’s a lot of predictions, like everything is going to be fully integrated and that it will be a natural progression of where we’re having conversations all the time with all of these tech tools that have been following us around in our pockets, being immersed and sort of downloaded to our phone. But it will be integrated and it would actually be more seamless and fluid in the way it won’t be so disconnected, like you’re over here as a human being. And then these tools are sort of separate, and you need other tools to integrate them into your life. It will all be a seamless fluid integration and usage. So it’s like a holistic approach. I mean, from the wearables that we’ll have to again, sort of this active engagement with the data that we’re downloading every minute of every day, and then how we go about and communicate with our customers and our clients.

Maureen Werrbach 00:14:03  To that end, I know there’s skepticism in our industry on that, especially as it relates to patient privacy and ethics and things like that. What response do you have to either easing or not? I’m assuming easing those that have hesitation because of those concerns specifically.

Amity Cooper 00:14:23  So concerns in regards to ethics and the.

Maureen Werrbach 00:14:27  Patient privacy with the use of technology. Of course, that’s like something that we see being an issue or a concern for a lot of practice owners is like not knowing what they don’t know to ask when it comes to using certain technologies and just knowing like what access to these technologies have, you know, how to research and ensure that patient privacy and the usage of patient data and information is, yeah, all of that kind of stuff. You know, it’s just I feel like especially in our industry right now, because the usage of tech is just beginning in a lot of ways to become more widespread. Right? There’s I know it’s been around, but those that have been comfortable and have been using it, I’ve been using it for a while, but it’s just becoming more relevant to the point where it’s just there’s programs helping transcribe sessions and just technologies are really starting to workers to help, you.

Amity Cooper 00:15:16  Know, and with assessments. I mean it’s a glutton actually of a race to market with all of this new technology because the backbone of it, this AI integration has exploded. So in that, I mean, those are all valid concerns, but I have to say, I have to throw it back on us as the industry leaders because we don’t see ourselves as that. We feel, I think in general, as a group, we’re sort of relayed information and we’re told that this is how it’s going to be done. But in this moment of explosive exponential technology development, we have the ability and we should be the leaders in the field. That means we should be partnering with these healthcare tech developers and showing the way about how clinically backed valid research should be conducted and we should be part of the solution. So that means that when somebody has a wonderful idea we need well can that be backed. Is it valid. Is it reliable? What other expertise where are you pulling this information from and how are you going to teach these large language model systems? How are you going to educate them? Because they’re the ones that are regurgitating back this information.

Amity Cooper 00:16:43  It is a design build process that we need to be as an industry, as a group. We need to be advocates for this. And there is this overwhelming fear factor. That and a growing gap between adoption and technological advancement. And there is a growing chasm of that information. So the only way to bridge that gap is to get ahead of it and to accept that this is a benefit for all of us. So let’s be the teachers, the leaders, the way shows forward in this field and not leave it to the companies that would actually take advantage of it.

Maureen Werrbach 00:17:27  Exactly, I like that. So for those that are maybe not as well versed, what are some practical first steps that your practice owners can take in the forward step or the forward movement of incorporating VR and technologies like this into their group practices?

Amity Cooper 00:17:45  Right. Well, I think first and foremost, you have to look at your practice. You have to look at the organization that you are working in or for, and you have to decide what kind of clientele you have.

Amity Cooper 00:17:57  I think it’s appropriate for everybody, but it’s all within the limits and the constructs of your practice design. So I would suggest that you get familiar with that. You have to see maybe you have a particular practice and anxiety management And this VR applications. There are many VR applications, specifically Amelia VR, I would say, is probably the front runner in today’s world that allows you to utilize their platform and serve those needs of your patients and of your clients. And so I would just explore and educate yourself about what immersive technologies therapies look like, who are the frontrunners in that field and and see ways in which that you can incorporate it and just try it out. You’re not going to break it. You just have to give yourself some room and some time to learn it, to get up to speed on how it works and functions.

Maureen Werrbach 00:18:56  Thanks for sharing that. If people wanted to get more support or learn more from you, how can they find you?

Amity Cooper 00:19:04  Yes, please reach out. I’m at Clinical Career collective.com and my company is really here for you to help tech you up and care wide out in the world.

Amity Cooper 00:19:16  And so I do that through a seven day bootcamp course called Do This. First, figuring out how to launch your practice successfully and to incorporate all of these new technologies into your toolbox.

Maureen Werrbach 00:19:28  I appreciate you coming on, and we’ll make sure to share all of that information in our show notes as well. But I just want to send my appreciation out to you for taking the time out to share this information, and I look forward to seeing more of what you have in this specific arena. Because like I said, there’s not that many people that I mean, not only are using VR and these kind of technologies, but just have like that extra specialization and knowledge to be able to help other people in this. So I appreciate it.

Amity Cooper 00:19:59  Thank you so much for having me. It’s exciting.

Maureen Werrbach 00:20:03  Thanks for listening. Give us five stars on whatever podcast streaming service you use, and I’ll see you next week.