***Trigger Warning : This article discusses suicide prevention

Can artificial intelligence software be used to draw crucial mental health insights from human-written data? Specifically, can AI be used to support suicide prevention? Cornish SME Akumen believe that their existing technology can be adapted to do just that.

Here’s how Smartline is supported this ground-breaking project.

The Background

Bude-based Akumen was founded in 2004. The Cornish SME has developed an industry-leading ethical Hybrid-Artificial Intelligence Natural Language Processing engine (shorter version: Hybrid-AI NLP engine). This clever tool can extract information from human-generated text, giving researchers efficient access to evidence-based insights and intelligence.

Now Akumen has seen another potential use for its engine: providing insights into mental health, and specifically, suicide prevention.

A growing mental health crisis

Mental health is becoming of increasing concern to public health teams, with the World Health Organization’s 2022 report showing that mental health problems are on the rise globally. Across the UK there were over 6,000 deaths by suicide in 2021, the last year for which figures are available. Suicide in England and Wales is three times more common among men than women. 

How Akumen can support mental health services

Akumen has a solution that could potentially help public health teams, which involves further developing their Hybrid AI NLP engine to extract specific evidence-based insights from data. Natural language algorithms could be used to identify people in need of urgent support.

The AI software will be able to scan through reams of human-generated text to find significant mental health insights, which could help mental health services make decisions about their patients. Of course, both the AI tool and the types of data collected will have to work together to achieve the most helpful results.

How Smartline Helped

Andy Crouch from Akumen approached Smartline for help with developing this tool further. We were able to offer two strands of support: In Residence research with Dr Tamaryn Menneer and initial scoping work with Cornwall Council with Dr Richard Sharpe.

Akumen is developing a chatbot to drive more qualitative data for their engine. Dr Menneer undertook reviewing and updating previous chatbot scoping work. This included reviewing research publications and resources relating to existing chatbots, and how effective and acceptable they are in the field of mental health. What standards and research methods are used to show chatbots are effective?

Akumen needed available datasets for testing purposes; and Dr Menneer found appropriate, licenced and licence-free datasets for them to use from a wide variety of sources. Tamaryn said:

“It was a pleasure to work with Andy, and to review interesting research, particularly the aspects I was less aware of, such as people’s acceptance of using chatbots. Akumen is addressing an important issue that often seems to be deprioritised, despite being on the rise, and I hope that our collaboration has provided support for their ongoing product development.”

Meanwhile, Andy and  Akumen founder Paul Howarth met with Richard along with Louise Argent and Paula Chappell from Cornwall Council to discuss Akumen’s Hybrid-AI engine. Akumen gained further insights into mental health by discussing it from a public health perspective. The outcome of this was a scoping report, from Akumen to the council, describing the potential to the county.

All the information gathered at the In Residence stage will help Akumen move forward with their engine’s new capability.

What are the next steps?

Akumen continue to explore the feasibility of their AI-NLP technology for suicide prevention. If Akumen’s product development continues to go well, their new tools could provide critical insights.

For Akumen, Smartline’s support has enabled the company to better understand the challenges and priorities for mental health. It has also directly supported Akumen to be in a position to successfully engage with the US Department of Veterans Affairs and their Veterans Health Administration Innovation Ecosystem."

Andy highlights the importance of this for a smaller business like his:

“There has also been a network element, in that through the grant and the project, we’ve met some hugely relevant stakeholders, hopefully everyone is benefiting from that, and it bodes well for the future.”

Watch this short film to hear Andy describe the work of Akumen

Who is involved?

Smartline is received funds from the England European Regional Development fund. Smartline’s Dr Richard Sharpe, Dr Tamaryn Menneer and James Rowberry worked with Andy Crouch and Paul Howarth from Akumen.