Prospective Clinicians for PAU eClinic

The PAU eClinic goes beyond zoom based therapy to train clinicians in the utilization of digital therapeutics and evidenced based treatments using technology.

Overview for Prospective Clinicians

The Palo Alto University (PAU) eClinic is an online, university-based teaching clinic which was first established in March 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s primary aim is to support counseling and psychology students in receiving clinical training in digital therapeutics and artificial-intelligence (AI) based interventions and supervision. 

While the PAU eClinic initially began by serving older adult populations, it quickly expanded into providing mental health services for first generation, economically disadvantaged students fostered by partnerships with local college success agencies. As referrals spread by word of mouth and the availabilities afforded by the PAU eClinic became more well known, the eClinic began to offer services for the general adult community across the state of California (CA), with clinicians providing therapeutic services for clients located as far as the southern and northern borders of CA. 

Fostered by its vision of becoming the premier training site for digital therapeutics and AI-based intervention and supervision, the PAU eClinic partnered with Eleos, an AI platform that provides analytics of sessions to clinicians and their supervisors immediately upon session completion. These analytics allow for review of session themes and interventions used to better support the clinician in the care of the client.

Competencies

—-Expectations—-

• Supplemental site for 3 or more terms
• 5 or more clients assigned
• Flexible hours between 8am-8pm M-F
• You set your schedule with your clients
• Weekly supervision by CA licensed therapists
• Monthly seminars
• Training in digital therapeutics including AI

AI Supported Supervision

The PAU eClinic therapists utilized an AI platform provided by Eleos Health. This platform is a secure and HIPAA-compliant tool designed for behavioral health, offering support for clinical decision-making and streamlining administrative tasks. During therapy sessions, the platform captures and analyzes the utterances of both the therapist and the client and provides feedback on the implementation of evidence-based practices (EBPs). Additionally, the platform includes a measurement-based care (MBC) component, where clients complete standardized assessments and the results are immediately summarized and graphed for the therapist to inform therapy and share with the client. The session data and MBC insights are summarized into a progress note draft that can be submitted or edited by the therapist. The platform also facilitates data-driven supervision by allowing access to relevant sections of the session, reducing the need to rely on memory or transcribe the entire session verbatim. For instance, a therapist can mark a specific exchange with their client and request feedback. The supervisor can have a clearer insight on how trainees’ sessions look like and the extent to which different EBPs are implemented in the session.