JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on healthcare workers’ mental health especially cannot be ignored. Not only did the pandemic exacerbate mental health challenges through elevated stress, anxiety, risk of infection and social isolation, regulations to minimize infection additionally hindered the conduct of traditional in-person mental health care.

Objective:

This paper explores the feasibility of using Wysa, an artificial intelligence-led mental health application among healthcare workers.

Methods:

A national tertiary healthcare cluster in Singapore piloted the use of Wysa among its own healthcare workers to support the management of their mental wellbeing during the pandemic (July 2020–June 2022). The adoption of this digital mental health intervention circumvented the limitations around in-person contact, and enabled large-scale access to evidence-based care. Rates and patterns of user engagement were evaluated.

Results:

Overall, the opportunity to use Wysa was well-received. Out of the 527 staff who onboarded in the app, 80.1% completed a minimum of two sessions. On average, users completed 10.9 sessions over 3.80 weeks. The interventions most utilized were for sleep and anxiety, with a strong repeat-usage rate. In this sample, 46.2% of healthcare workers reported symptoms of anxiety (GAD-7), and 15.2% were likely to have symptoms of depression (PHQ-2).

Conclusions:

Based on the present findings, Wysa appears to strongly engage those with none to moderate symptoms of anxiety. This evaluation demonstrates the viability of implementing Wysa as a standard practice among this sample of healthcare workers, which may support the use of similar digital interventions across other communities.