Kintsugi

Are you heading to #HLTH2025 in Las Vegas next week? Kintsugi’s Grace Chang (Founder/CEO) and Albert Ihochi (Head of Strategy and Business Development) will be attending. If you’ll also be there and would like to explore opportunities to collaborate, our team would love to connect! We’re excited to share what we’ve been working on at Kintsugi: 💬 Kay, our empathetic AI agent that can detect signs of mental health challenges during natural conversations. 🧠 Our recent engagements across international employers like NTT, government contract agencies like Leidos, and technology firms like Microsoft. Reach out to Grace or Albert to arrange to meet up during the event.

Today on #WorldMentalHealthDay, let’s pause to reflect on why we do what we do. The World Health Organization recently reported that over 1 billion people worldwide are living with mental health conditions. Yet with only 2% of health budgets going to mental health globally and extreme shortages of providers, it’s clear that traditional approaches alone can’t keep up. At Kintsugi, we believe technology can help bridge that gap. That’s why we built Kay – our new AI agent designed to screen for signs of mental health challenges while simply conversing with people in a natural, empathetic way. Kay can seamlessly integrate into healthcare touchpoints such as patient monitoring calls and onboarding – moments that often don’t leave room for in-depth mental health screening. With patient consent, Kay surfaces unspoken mental health challenges and helps individuals get closer to the right level of care at the right time. Given how tight mental health budgets are around the world, low-resource and scalable solutions like this truly have the power to revolutionize care. Access to care shouldn’t be a privilege. With the right tools, we can make quality mental health support more universal than ever before. Learn more about Kay: https://lnkd.in/eWKXM--s 

August is Wellness Month – and at Kintsugi, we believe that caring for mental health starts with the small choices we make everyday. So we asked our team: What’s one small wellness habit you’ve built into your day? Here’s what they shared: “I reset with physical activities that also draw my mental focus, like indoor rock climbing, intense yoga, or dance fitness." “I like to brew some coffee (with a manual brewer) as a stress reliever. I like the ritual of grinding the beans and making coffee, and the smell and taste afterwards is a nice reward “I like to take a walk outside or sing.” “Retail therapy and then cooking a gourmet meal to enjoy!” Wellness looks different for everyone. And it doesn’t have to be complicated. All of us can create space for practices, no matter how small, that help us recharge and reflect. What’s one small habit that helps you feel well at work?

💬 “We just didn’t have time to keep chasing patients.” That’s what Andrea Piazza, Founder of forward-thinking mental health practice Dreavita Counseling, Coaching, and Consulting, told us when we first met. Running a behavioral health clinic is never just about delivering care. It’s also about managing compliance, patient engagement, billing codes, intake forms… and all the paperwork in between. On top of that, providers need to have a clear measurement of patients’ mental health severity at intake, so that they can provide the most appropriate level of support. And for Dreavita, the depression screening process using PHQ-9 questionnaires has traditionally been a major roadblock. Only 30% of patients were completing it – meaning care coordinators were spending 20+ minutes per patient following up. That’s hours of lost time (and revenue). So they tried something new. They enabled Kintsugi Voice – our AI voice biomarker technology – by embedding it directly into their virtual sessions. With patient consent, it listens passively and screens for depression and anxiety in just 20 seconds. Results are delivered in real time. In just 6 weeks: Screening rates jumped from 30% to 96% Clinician confidence in the tool’s results was 100% The practice saved 1,900+ minutes per 100 patients Which translated into $5,412/month in reclaimed revenue Patients said they preferred the experience and clinicians got more time to focus on care. This study explored how voice insights can augment clinical workflows and improve screening consistency. Kintsugi is currently a part of ongoing clinical evaluations. Read the full story to see how even small operational changes can unlock major impact: https://lnkd.in/eM4iEnbm

We’re grateful to Silicon Valley Japan Platform (SVJP) and One Mind for the opportunity to take part in this important conversation on the future of workplace mental health. It was an honor to have our Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Prentice Tom, join this thoughtful and timely panel exploring how innovation and empathy must go hand-in-hand as we integrate mental health technology into care settings globally. At Kintsugi, we’re building voice biomarker AI that can help organizations detect signs of depression and anxiety from just 20 seconds of speech – enabling more proactive, personalized and scalable mental health support. Thank you again to One Mind at Work and SVJP – with special thanks to moderator Haruka Kokaze, as well as organizers Mutsumi Ogaki and Yumi Hiroshima – for bringing together leaders who are committed to advancing mental health with purpose.

🇯🇵 We’re proud to share that Kintsugi has been selected as one of 20 international finalists for the Global Healthcare Challenge (GHeC) – a global pitch event taking place next week in Osaka, Japan. Representing the United States on a global stage, we’ll be joining healthtech, medtech and agetech innovators from around the world, each working to tackle some of the most pressing health challenges of our time. Finalists were selected based on five core criteria: - Innovation - Social impact - Business potential - Feasibility - Contribution to solving real-world health issues. This moment is especially meaningful to us – because Japan is a country where our work is already in motion as it continues to face one of the world’s most severe public health crises related to workplace stress and mental health challenges. 1 in 5 workers in Japan are at risk of karoshi – death from overwork – due to heart attack, stroke or stress-induced suicide. In partnership with NTT-AT, the advanced technology arm of Fortune 100 company NTT, Kintsugi is helping shift the standard of care to objective voice-based screening that can identify signs of depression and anxiety in seconds. This empowers organizations to take earlier, more personalized action in support of employee mental wellness. We’re excited to share our story at GHeC and connect with forward-thinking leaders, technologists and healthcare innovators in Japan who are equally determined to build a more proactive and compassionate approach to mental wellness.

At Kintsugi, we're excited to be rolling out Kay, an empathetic voice AI agent, across several partners this week! From voice search on consumer health sites to pre-/post-visit intake to clinical trials to NP assistants and more. Looking forward to sharing Kay at the Global Healthcare Challenge (GHeC) in Osaka and Tokyo next week and repping 1 of 5 U.S. companies in this Top 20! 🇺🇸🇯🇵🇸🇬🇨🇱🇬🇧🇨🇦🇮🇳🇨🇭🇮🇱 Talk to Kay: https://lnkd.in/gehxwFiN and share your feedback!

AI agents are officially the next frontier. All the biggest names in tech – Amazon, OpenAI, Google, Anthropic – are racing to build agents that don’t just answer questions, but take action. It’s very exciting to imagine where this is going. But how do we build AI that’s not just intelligent, but truly understanding? Let’s look at the difference: 🍎 A smart agent can help you reorder your groceries.  But a human-aware agent might notice that you’ve been skipping meals altogether. 🧑⚕️ A smart agent can book a doctor’s appointment when your prescription medication is running low. But a human-aware agent might detect that the medication isn’t working anymore. 📧 A smart agent can sort out your overflowing inbox while you sleep.  But a human-aware agent might see that you’re at risk of burnout and suggest taking some work off your plate. There’s a lot of focus on efficiency in the agentic AI world – but what about empathy? What about the ability to recognize when someone isn’t okay, even if they don’t say it outright? If we get this right, the next generation of AI agents could become true advocates for our well-being.

🌳 What if your doctor could prescribe a walk in nature or an art class just like they do medication? “Social prescribing” is gaining traction as a powerful tool to complement traditional mental health care. And it’s backed by research: community connection and lifestyle interventions have been shown to have a positive effect on mental health outcomes. But new tools for treatment also require new tools for assessment. To prescribe the right level of care – whether it’s nature walks or clinical care – providers need a clear, objective picture of where individuals fall on the mental health continuum. Emerging technologies like voice biomarker AI are making this possible. Using short speech samples, we can objectively screen for signs and severity of anxiety and depression, helping providers personalize care more effectively. As our understanding of mental health evolves, so too should the tools we use to deliver care – from what we prescribe to how we decide what’s needed in the first place.