{"id":1438,"date":"2026-01-07T15:32:58","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T20:32:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/me-arc\/?p=1438"},"modified":"2026-01-07T15:32:58","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T20:32:58","slug":"mobile-and-electronic-health-arc-seminar-march-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/me-arc\/2026\/01\/07\/mobile-and-electronic-health-arc-seminar-march-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Mobile and Electronic Health ARC Seminar | March 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Please join the Mobile & Electronic Health ARC on\u00a0<\/span>Thursday,\u00a0March 19th\u00a0<\/span><\/b>from<\/span>\u00a012-1pm\u00a0<\/span><\/b>for a\u00a0<\/span>virtual seminar<\/span><\/b>\u00a0titled \u201cTherabot: 6.5 Years and Over 100,000\u00a0Human Hours\u00a0Building and Evaluating the First Generative AI Psychotherapy Chatbot\u201d.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Our presenter,\u00a0<\/span>Dr.\u00a0<\/span><\/b>Nicholas C. Jacobson<\/span><\/b>, is\u00a0a\u00a0Professor\u00a0<\/span>of\u00a0Biomedical Data Science, Psychiatry, and Computer Science<\/span>\u00a0at\u00a0Dartmouth College\u00a0and\u00a0Director of the AIM HIGH Laboratory. His\u00a0research focuses on using technology to improve mental health assessment and treatment. His lab develops AI systems that analyze passive sensor data from smartphones and wearables to detect and predict changes in anxiety and depression. In this talk,\u00a0he’ll\u00a0describe the 6.5-year path to building\u00a0Therabot, a generative AI chatbot for psychotherapy recently tested in a randomized controlled trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine AI. Early attempts\u00a0training\u00a0on peer support forums and psychotherapy transcripts failed badly. The team then built custom training data from scratch, investing over\u00a0100,000 hours\u00a0of expert clinical supervision and refinement. The resulting chatbot was tested with 210 participants across depression, anxiety, and eating disorder risk groups. Compared to waitlist controls, users showed large and significant symptom reductions across all three conditions. Average engagement exceeded 6 hours per person across 24 separate days, breaking the typical pattern where users abandon mental health apps within the first week.\u00a0He’ll\u00a0discuss what worked, what\u00a0didn’t, and implications for the broader mHealth field.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For more information about the seminar, please see the attached flyer.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>The Zoom details are included below:\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Date:\u00a0Thursday,\u00a0March\u00a019<\/span>th<\/span>, 2026<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Time: 12:00-1:00PM Eastern Time<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

https:\/\/bostonu.zoom.us\/j\/94333313971?pwd=FKwTTu90uxSbQifuArA1FEWDrtlNeW.1<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Meeting ID: 943 3331 3971\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Passcode: 643791<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Please feel free to reach out\u00a0with\u00a0any questions to Maria Monteiro at mmontei1@bu.edu!\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

ME-ARC PI & Director: Belinda Borrelli, Ph.D.; Leadership Team: Daniel Fulford, Ph.D. (Co-Director), Joanne Murabito, M.D. (Co-Director), and Lisa Quintiliani, Ph.D.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Flyer (March 2026)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Please join the Mobile & Electronic Health ARC on\u00a0Thursday,\u00a0March 19th\u00a0from\u00a012-1pm\u00a0for a\u00a0virtual seminar\u00a0titled \u201cTherabot: 6.5 Years and Over 100,000\u00a0Human Hours\u00a0Building and Evaluating the First Generative AI Psychotherapy Chatbot\u201d.\u00a0 Our presenter,\u00a0Dr.\u00a0Nicholas C. Jacobson, is\u00a0a\u00a0Professor\u00a0of\u00a0Biomedical Data Science, Psychiatry, and Computer Science\u00a0at\u00a0Dartmouth College\u00a0and\u00a0Director of the AIM HIGH Laboratory. His\u00a0research focuses on using technology to improve mental health assessment and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25051,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/me-arc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1438"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/me-arc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/me-arc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/me-arc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25051"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/me-arc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/me-arc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1440,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/me-arc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1438\/revisions\/1440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/me-arc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/me-arc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/me-arc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}