Who is Dr. Grin Lord?
Dr. Grin Lord is the founder/CEO of mpathic.ai – empathy and human conversation analytics – and of Therapists in Tech (TnT) a collaborative of 3k+ digital mental health experts defining the digital mental health revolution together. Dr. Lord was the Chief Clinical Officer of Lyssn.io, Clinical Product Psychologist at Youper.ai, and Research Scientist at University of Washington. Her areas of expertise include: generative AI, conversational design, using AI and machine learning to augment human connection, evidence-based therapies, health coaching, and psychology.
Since 2007, Dr. Lord worked as a clinician-researcher at University of Washington in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Her research and writing focuses on the intersection of AI and empathy, improving human connection, understanding evidence-based therapy, treatment of posttraumatic stress and substance abuse, the interpretation of the family, and the social meaning of trauma.
What is mpathic?
mpathic is an innovative conversation analytics and coaching platform empowering healthcare, life sciences, and client services leaders to deliver exceptional care. With over a decade of scientific validation, mpathic’s proprietary machine learning (ML) models objectively identify, correct, and enhance over 100 behaviors observed in conversations with the accuracy of human doctors.
Our current use cases include AI augmentation for clinical trial fidelity monitoring, scaling human medical monitors and ensuring FDA adherence in clinical trials for CNS. We also have an API that can be used by anyone building emotion AI applications to have real-time tips and corrections to communication.
What inspired you to start your company?
I have spent the past 15 years as a psychologist-researcher studying the key ingredients in conversations that lead to trust and empathy. I define empathy as accurate understanding; using AI I believe everyone can have an accurate understanding of other people, but they need training, coaching, and tips to be able to do so. mpathic is like having a mentor with you to review and improve in very specific and actionable ways. I started mpathic to allow anyone to access empathy. Now, with our applications in life science, we are able to save lives with AI by detecting when there is a misunderstanding between a doctor or therapist and their patient, or when the patient is experiencing side-effects or suicidal ideation. We ended up going far beyond bringing empathy to everyone, and instead to bring understanding to everyone.
How will mpathic change the world?
If mpathic is successful at scale, we will have better human connection, safety, and trust through AI augmentation. Everyone will have access to the best models to detect and improve problems in communication before they start. Accurate detection of emotions, behaviors, and psychological events, will help improve human connection, and in the short-term, ease manual and burdensome work for doctors in life science applications, so they can do the work that really matters – like treating patients versus reviewing long audio and video recordings.
What is the hardest part of being a founder? And what’s the most rewarding?
I love being a founder, and after working 40-50 hours as a psychologist at a hospital or in the dependency court; this is frankly easy. My heart goes out to all therapists – you do the real work of holding and solving human problems. So my small hard problems really are nothing compared to what I used to have to do. For me, the biggest learning or shift, has been moving from being a peer/team member to being at “the top”; there are often difficult decisions I have to make that have a lot of context that I can’t or shouldn’t talk to my team about fully – as a solo founder that is magnified. The most rewarding part to-date has been hearing customers reactions to our product; we had a customer that spent 8 hours a day reviewing videos for adverse events and with mpathic they no longer have to do this, and said, “Thank god for mpathic, we wouldn’t be able to complete our trial without you.” That was huge.
Why Graham & Walker Loves mpathic
Graham & Walker is proud to be an investor in mpathic. Dr. Grin Lord is an expert in generative AI, conversational design, using AI and machine learning to augment human connection, evidence-based therapies, health coaching, and psychology. As the relevancy of AI communication continues to grow in our day-to-day lives, we believe in Grin’s vision that empathy is for everyone. Grin is helping to shape the discussion around AI facilitation of person-to-person interaction, and we’re impressed by her thought leadership. We understand that how we communicate and build trust with others is a deeply human problem that mpathic approaches with scientifically validated models.
