Evaluating Hello Tomo’s Mental Health Chat-bot

Overview

Tomo is an app based behaviour change tool for mental health and wellbeing. It helps users build and manage healthy habits through support from peers in the Tomo community. The purpose of the study was to understand how Tomo can drive clinically valid outcomes for depression and anxiety, and find ways to improve the product offer to customers.

Tomo participated in the Simulation for Digital Health ERDF programme at LSBU.

Approach

The first phase of the research study ran for four months with 40 participants using the Tomo app while undergoing regular psychometric tests to determine its impact on mental health. This was combined with insights from focus groups and interview analysis to provided initial evidence of the platforms efficacy, and gave the client an indication of what worked and what could be improved,  

The data used, which was collected as part of Tomo’s routine operation, also informed the design of independent, pre-registered, service evaluation.  

Conclusion

Results indicated that Tomo created new habits in participants over the study period, and had a positive impact on psychometric test outcomes.