An AI mental health chatbot used on our Mind Matters Surrey website to help people refer themselves for support has been awarded Class IIa UKCA medical device status. Limbic Access is the first and only AI mental health chatbot in the world to earn this status for its clinical effectiveness, safety and risk management.
Mind Matters is an NHS Talking Therapies service which offers counselling, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and group courses for people who are feeling low, anxious or stressed. When people visit the Mind Matters website looking for help, the Limbic Access chatbot pops up and greets them. The chatbot guides people through a simple referral process in a friendly and easy-to-use way. Once referrals are received by the Mind Matters team, the team have everything they need to follow up with the person and plan the next steps of their support
The chatbot benefits both Mind Matters and people using the service. It has saved on average 15 minutes of staff time per referral – around 2000 hours so far. People who use the service can refer themselves at a time that is convenient to them, as Limbic Access is available on the site 24/7. 98.72% of people who left feedback on the service said that Limbic had been helpful.
Dr Gisela Unsworth, Clinical Service Manager at Mind Matters said:
“Limbic Access has been a great asset to our service, reducing administration time and acting as a clinical support tool to our clinicians in the assessment of people who use our services, enabling them to focus on supporting people in the best way they can. With this classification we are looking forward to exploring other features of Limbic Access to bring further benefits to people who use our service and our team. Congratulations to the Limbic team on this fantastic achievement.”
UKCA auditors reviewed clinical evidence generated from more than 60,000 people who used Limbic Access across all its NHS partners and found that when compared with standard referral methods such as telephone calls and online forms, Limbic Access helped NHS services deliver:
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53% improvement in recovery rates
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45% fewer changes in treatment, due to increased triage accuracy
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23.5% reduction in assessment time - a saving of 12.7 minutes per referral
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18% reduction in treatment dropouts
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13% reduction in wait time for assessment
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5% shorter wait time for treatment
Read more about Mind Matters and Limbic on this case study from NHS Transform