Corey Dion Lewis (00:01.472)
Welcome back to the Healthy Project Podcast. I'm your host, Corey Dion Lewis. Today, I'm really excited about this conversation and it sits at the intersection of technology, ethics, and mental health care. And we kind of talked about this before, but finding the right therapist is tough, is complex, deep personal relationships and...

when we're talking about AI and mental health care, people get kind of freaked out. There's ethics, there's all these things that come into play. But joining me today, I have Cole Smith. He is the founder of Opal, a company that is tackling these challenges head on. So Cole, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it.

Cole Smith (00:46.317)
thank you so much for having me. Yeah, this is super cool. Yeah, very happy to talk about these things.

Corey Dion Lewis (00:51.146)
Yeah, so before we get into our conversation, which I'm excited about, can you tell the people a little bit more about yourself and kind of what gets you going, what gets you up in the morning?

Cole Smith (01:01.858)
Yeah, no, absolutely. So, you know, at the end of the day, mental health care gets me up in the morning, right? I've walked my own journey with it. I grew up around therapists who were friends and family. I saw them kind of run their practice. And I got that sort of look behind the curtain, not only as, you know, a client in my own sort of journey, but also seen all the things that they had to do kind of outside of the chair, right? Oftentimes things that they weren't even paid for.

I started Opal in order to make that a better thing for not only therapists but also their clients. At the end of the day, the thing that works best is the therapeutic alliance and we're here to strengthen that.

Corey Dion Lewis (01:43.786)
No, that's amazing. So tell me, when you say strengthening that, which I think is very important, especially when we're talking about something as important as our mental health, the ethical concerns about AI and healthcare and how biases and algorithms can be addressed. Can you talk a little bit about that and what are your thoughts on that and how can we improve that?

Cole Smith (02:09.932)
No, absolutely. It's an incredibly important topic. It's an incredibly deep topic too. We could talk endlessly about this sort of thing, but I'll keep it brief in sort of what I'm seeing and like what we've tackled when it comes to how we developed Opal and ensuring that that is safe and equitable as well. The big thing on people's minds is absolutely patient privacy, right? At the end of the day, the mental healthcare industry is built on trust.

There's trust in that therapeutic relationship that you give to your therapist because that's what's allows us to bring down our walls, right? And our barriers and your therapist needs that information. And when you're on guard, you, can't have that sort of thing, but you also place your trust in tools like what we've developed with Opal. And it's our duty to ensure proper stewardship and how your data is treated effectively and nicely. So.

this trust extends kind of throughout the mental health care industry. And I think it is sort of like the grounding factor that's really unique within healthcare overall is that trust, especially at mental

Corey Dion Lewis (03:21.334)
Yeah, and I was just having this conversation yesterday, and it's like when we're talking about all the new technology that is getting better and better every day, there has been a resistance to it, not even just in mental health care, but just in health care in general, like this resistance of like what it is. And some of it, you know, we can say, yeah, there is some legitimate issue when we're looking at the bias of algorithms and things like that, but

It's not going anywhere. the technology is here and is here to stay. So how can we better, how can we continue to improve it? But what is that human element to AI? How can we continue to connect people to trusting? Because not only do we have to trust the provider, we have to trust the platform that they're utilizing or the AI that they're utilizing.

Cole Smith (03:55.595)
Yeah, exactly.

Corey Dion Lewis (04:21.772)
How can, and yourself, you're doing this already, how can we continue to shape these tools where people can feel like they are getting the proper care that they deserve and need?

Cole Smith (04:35.074)
Yeah, absolutely. mean, long story short, I think it all comes down to agency that you give people. So the freedom to kind of say how they want their treatment to go either as a client or as a therapist to like another machine or another platform, right? At the end of the day, the way I kind of look at where AI is going is it's like when the internet first came out. Now, I wasn't really alive for that sort of thing, but from what I've read and what I've seen,

It really is this like new shift, in my opinion, in the way that we communicate, right? For the first time ever, we have this sort of asynchronous way of correspondence that lets you, in our case at least, feel more connected to your therapist or to your treatment while they can't necessarily be there. And before we were using things like email or text messages and you're waiting on a reply and it's necessarily synchronous. But I think the beautiful thing about

what we kind of see on the horizon is this deeper form of human connection that you actually get from it. You know, I almost envision a world where the low level kind of correspondence that maybe you and I had when coordinating this podcast or that you have day to day with your friends can be abstracted away with something like an AI assistant. And it allows you to

put more value, I would say, into those human connections, right? You can almost think on like a second order when you finally get in front of somebody to talk with them. That's a very meaningful thing. And you're on the same page now, which is incredibly powerful in a way that we haven't really had before. So I see a lot of optimism in how we're able to apply these sort of things effectively. But you're completely right that this moves at like 100 miles an hour.

It's different from when we started the internet because it moves so fast. And it takes time and effort to say, okay, hang on, let's pump the brakes on this a little bit and look at what are the implications of what we're doing. Let's consider those things at a 10,000 foot view before we really dive into something that we didn't intend to have happen. Yeah.

Corey Dion Lewis (06:52.554)
No, 100%. And I also, just as you were talking, I was thinking like, are those that maybe when they're just, personally, you're just getting started with therapy or with your therapist, you don't really know how to communicate with them in person. And I think it's just a great way of your therapist getting to better understand who you are without the stress of having to figure out, okay, what am I going to do in this first appointment? Like what is...

what does therapy look like? And you just don't even know what direction you need to go. And I think, like you said, it's a great assistant. It's a great tool to kind of help that therapist better understand what's going on with their client.

Cole Smith (07:32.77)
Yeah, absolutely. And like when you think about it, 99 % of a client's time isn't spent in therapy. Life happens all around them at all points in time. Yeah, exactly. So wouldn't it be wonderful to incorporate at least some of that, at least the really important parts of that into their treatment? And we often describe Opal to clients as a kind of intelligent journal because it gives them

Corey Dion Lewis (07:42.262)
Yeah.

Cole Smith (08:01.846)
a kind of purpose to why this sort of thing is there for them. It's there to have the same sort of catharsis as you get when you write in a journal. But unlike a journal, when you close that book, it's gone. Well, it's not gone, but it's not part of your treatment. We let you put that in front of somebody that can make a difference for you, a real expert that knows you deeply and will know you even more deeply now that you're able to describe these sort of things with.

Corey Dion Lewis (08:11.881)
Right.

Corey Dion Lewis (08:30.26)
Right, right. And you know, one of the things too, when we're thinking about mental health care is accessibility to care. One second, my dog. he can't get out.

Cole Smith (08:44.668)
no. I've got a dog as well.

Corey Dion Lewis (08:47.222)
Go. There you go. The magic of editing.

Cole Smith (08:51.15)
Yeah, exactly. That's good stuff. Yeah, of course.

Corey Dion Lewis (08:58.62)
Awesome. So let me run that back. This was at minute nine. Okay, cool. So the one thing about mental health care, especially in rural areas, is access to care and equitable mental health care. How do you feel like AI can be used to improve this concern and this issue in some of these areas?

Cole Smith (09:25.912)
Yeah, absolutely. And this is an area, by the way, that I just think is incredibly important, but also very interesting. And I really believe that this is like the problem of our time when it comes to healthcare overall. And there's always going to be this sort of elephant in the room about cost and the cost to get any form of healthcare, whether it be mental healthcare or your GP or anything varies widely, orders of magnitude even.

Corey Dion Lewis (09:45.729)
Mm-hmm.

Cole Smith (09:54.968)
from person to person. Now there's great companies out there. Mentaya is one of them that's like trying to close this sort of cost accessibility gap. But there's still way more work to be done too on how people get equitable access to mental health care. You made a really good point too about how that happens in rural communities when people aren't physically co-located enough to sometimes build those sort of bonds.

What we want to do at, or what I find really interesting too, is the physical accessibility to treatment is a large part of what we do at Opal. As a client, you can access Opal safely from anywhere, anywhere that there is an internet connection. And I found that to be something that I really hold kind of dear to my heart is the ability for clients to touch base with them.

kind of anywhere. That's a hard thing to do nowadays, especially since you need compliant channels in order to kind of communicate effectively and you're not always expected a reply. But what if you had a way to kind of access that sort of thing 24 hours a day, like in the moment that you need it and it's kind of with you wherever you go. So to me, physical accessibility is a big part of what I want to go out there and solve to do. there is, and I could talk to you about this too.

The way we access mental health care is just so fragmented and so broken from many different kind of facets. Cost being a huge one, physical access being another.

Corey Dion Lewis (11:29.812)
Yeah. And, you know, I kind of want to get into that a little bit because, know, is, is interesting because someone may, people need help at different times. Right. And you take into, you take into consideration there, there is this, there is this barrier where, Hey, I know I need, I know I want to see a therapist, but their, their hours are nine to five. I work nine to five. I don't have

Cole Smith (11:40.067)
Yeah.

Corey Dion Lewis (11:59.338)
I don't have PTO, I can't do this, I can't do that. Will my insurance provider pay for it? Is there someone that I feel comfortable? There are so many barriers to get to that very first appointment, right? But I would love for you to talk more about that and how, is this something that at Opal you're really thinking about?

and what that looks like in the future.

Cole Smith (12:30.582)
my gosh, absolutely. That first step is, in my opinion, the most important step you will ever take in therapy. It is that moment of self-realization that I need the help and I'm gonna go do something about it. To me, that is the biggest step that you will ever take. It's the biggest success you will have. Well, hopefully, you know, the success is that you finish your treatment and you feel better, but that's the thing.

Corey Dion Lewis (12:55.786)
Right.

Cole Smith (12:59.234)
that kickstarts at all. And you're right, it is an incredibly difficult process. I mean, I'll be honest, I went through it recently with myself, trying to find a therapist, going through the directories. A lot of people at the end of the day have caretakers or loved ones kind of do this process for them because it is so difficult. And it's a thing that got handed to us kind of down by the medical industry, but it doesn't work in a field where you need to build

a deep relationship in order to have a therapeutic outcome. You don't need that same kind of deep relationship with maybe like your GP or your ENT. Those, you know, they handle with physical tests. It's kind of apparent what's going on. But when you have to communicate kind of what's going on, it becomes part of your behavior. That's when things get, in our case, a lot more nuanced. So, yeah, I think that this is a incredibly difficult sort of problem to solve, but it's one that

we want to go out there and solve. We want to be kind of like that front door that it's the first thing you see when you decide that therapy is what's needed for you. And it's also that front door that you can kind of return to at every step along the way. It's always that home that you can come back to that gives you grounding, makes you feel like you have a connection, something physical to either your treatment or your therapist or...

you know, the outcomes that you want to see with.

Corey Dion Lewis (14:29.802)
Yeah. So, know, so far Cole, you have, I'm not a mental health therapist, but you have me. So like, I think it's a great thing, right? But there, there are, there's going to be those therapists that are old school, like, no, you still got those cats that are pen and pen and paper or whatever, whatever it is. What, what can help, what do healthcare professionals need to know about AI right now? And how can they stay informed?

Cole Smith (14:37.016)
Right?

Cole Smith (14:45.986)
yeah, heard.

Corey Dion Lewis (14:57.378)
without falling into some of these fear traps.

Cole Smith (15:00.774)
no, absolutely. And I just want to say that like, you know, I'm not a therapist myself, but I empathize so greatly with you guys, healthcare professionals, therapists, you guys get inundated with tools that make promises to you, that try to sell to you. It's like really hard to cut through the noise. And at the same time, I don't even think pen and paper, you know, is all that bad. If that works well for you in like how you do your treatment.

there's no reason to change that if it's going to kind of put a barrier in the way for you. However you connect best with your client is the thing that you should do. So to therapists or mental health care professionals overall that are thinking about these sort of things and may want to try them, I'm going to put on my security officer hat here for a minute.

Corey Dion Lewis (15:36.161)
Right.

Cole Smith (15:56.94)
And I'll say that with like all the new tools popping up, you know, this moves at like a thousand miles an hour. Check really carefully their HIPAA and their privacy policies. Don't consider any tool that's not going to offer you a business associate agreement. It's a really easy thing to check on their website. There are several tools out there that say just like, please don't upload personal health information. And they call it.

HIPAA compliant and until we see like regulation kind of cracking down on these sort of things, they will slip through the cracks. So one like very concrete thing to look out for is just make sure that the company is reputable with how they respect the HIPAA laws because those are there to protect you. They're there for, you know, to protect clients as well and look for tools that are transparent about their AI practices, right? There's no magic bullet here. I'm telling you as somebody that

You know, worked in AI, like previously has been a machine learning engineer, was around with NLP before people really cared about it and they were obsessed with self-driving cars. There's no secret sauce here to AI and healthcare, at least right now. So follow the ones that put out research that show you transparently how they built their systems and why that's in your best interest and not theirs.

Corey Dion Lewis (17:13.324)
That's a good point. And I don't think a lot of people know where to even look for that or even know what to look for. And I think that's half of the reason why people are so nervous about it. Because all you see on TV or the internet are all the bad things that are happening around AI and some of these tools. And if that's all you see, that's all you know.

So it's really good to know that there are some doing some great stuff out there.

Cole Smith (17:43.97)
Yeah, and I'll plug a pretty cool essay by the CEO of Anthropic. So have you heard of Claude before? you used that model before? yeah, I love Claude. I think it's a great model. Yeah, it's good stuff. And their CEO put out a really interesting essay right now. I wish I remembered the name, but it's pretty easy to find it out there. And he gives a really good, very grounded to like 10 year perspective on

Corey Dion Lewis (17:53.503)
absolutely.

Cole Smith (18:11.938)
the good things that AI is going to kind of bring to the world. And of course, he's the CEO of an AI company, you would expect that. But when I read it, I was really impressed at how sort of level-headed he approached us. I think you're right. We do see a lot of fear-mongering when it comes to AI and how that's applied. I think a lot of that comes down to how quickly it's applied as well. But there is a methodical way to kind of go about

And at the end of the day, you know, it's built by humans. It always comes back to humans who I believe have, you know, good intentions with what they're doing. And our job today as people selecting tools is just to ensure that those good intentions align with what they've put out there in the world, at least that they're safe, that they keep patient data safe at the end of the day, and that they're there for your best interests.

Corey Dion Lewis (19:08.044)
100%. So what's next for Opal? You're doing great things now. Where do you see this technology that you're creating? Where do you see it in the future? it just, is it going to stay in this mental health lane? Do you see it having other applications? Where are we going from here?

Cole Smith (19:27.704)
Yeah, absolutely. So, you we started with mental health care. It's a passion of mine. It is what turned my life around in college for sure. So it's where, you know, we spend our time today. It's where our expertise lies. But I'll tell you that this is a problem throughout all of health care. It's this more grounded problem of how patients and providers communicate at the end of the day, which is so broken, right? You know, if you ever got

Corey Dion Lewis (19:56.47)
Mm-hmm.

Cole Smith (19:57.582)
If you ever needed to get like in touch with your doctor, there's like four different people or four different calls you have to kind of get in the way to do that sort of thing. And when you have a field that is fully based on that relationship and your outcomes are tied almost entirely to that relationship, if we can do anything to make that easier, to make that patient provider communication problem easier, that's what we're going to do. And we see that as some.

that's really powerful. So overall, what's next for us, we would love to see it one day, you know, be able to branch out into other fields of healthcare to help people solve other healthcare problems that in my opinion are related to mental healthcare, but also may not be because this problem is everywhere. So that's where I'm thinking it's all going.

Corey Dion Lewis (20:53.42)
That's awesome. Well, Cole, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. I really appreciated it. For anybody listening that wants to learn more, connect with you, learn more about Opal and how to get in contact and utilize your platform, where can they reach you?

Cole Smith (21:11.182)
Yeah, absolutely. So you can find me just like on LinkedIn as well. You can just search Cole Smith. You'll find me that way if you want to get in touch with me. But if you're a if you're anybody at the end of the day, you can go to chat. Hey, opal.com and you can experience opal for yourself like totally for free. No account needed. You don't even have to connect it to your therapist. You can if you want to. But we put that out there.

So that way, as a way to give back to our community, right? As a way to give people a touch point for something when they need it. So if you're ever feeling like it's something that you need, it's there for you, no matter who you are. And if you're a therapist, it's ready for you as well. You can just go to our website, heyopel.com, and we'd be happy to have you.

Corey Dion Lewis (21:59.18)
That's dope. I really like that. That's really, really cool that people can try this out and really, like you said, way of giving back. That's really, really cool.

Cole Smith (22:08.846)
Thanks, man. Yeah, like I'm from St. Pete, Florida, right? So six months ago, we had devastating hurricanes that rolled through here and we released it around that time and people were using it at like three in the morning as, you know, not as a way to fix their problems because it was, it was just so devastating, but just as something to listen, something that wasn't going to judge them, wasn't even human at the end of the day, but just something to get that.

Corey Dion Lewis (22:16.492)
Mmm.

Cole Smith (22:37.6)
and those feelings out. And we received a lot of really positive feedback from people during that time. But it's always there. It's there for clients completely free and even if you don't have a therapist, we'll help.

Corey Dion Lewis (22:52.284)
that's cool. And I can almost see it as a way. And I know I was like about to end this, but like that kind of a new kind of thought for me was like, I love things that that close gaps in care, right? And this is just a great way of someone going through a hard time or like you said, something, a devastating natural disaster when not everything is

went where you need it. Like, man, I wish I can call my go to the therapist right now, but it's one o'clock in the morning. Nothing's accessible, but you have something that's accessible that at least can get you through until you can get to that human connection. I think that's really, really important to emphasize and highlight.

Cole Smith (23:38.156)
No, absolutely. I'm glad you did because that's precisely what it's there for, right? I don't really think that therapists will be replaced by AI tools. I don't think clients want that. They love your human side. They love all the flaws that you bring to the table because that's who they can relate to. So we want that to be the thing that gets you clients, gets people through the door and gets people the help they need.

Corey Dion Lewis (24:06.046)
Awesome. again, Cole, thank you so much for being here. I will make sure I have those links in the description of this episode on the audio and video version of this. Again, Cole, thank you so much. Everybody, thank you for listening to the Healthy Project podcast. I'll highlight you next time.

Cole Smith (24:26.21)
Thank you guys, see ya.