During quarantine, some have taken up knitting, while others have restructured their workout routines. tiger kingBryan Kehnbrink, a psychologist at the UNC School of Medicine, used the time of the pandemic to develop a different kind of skill.
“I think other people were baking bread and I was trying to learn how to code at home,” says Kehnbrink.
After struggling to connect with patients online, Kehnbrink not only improved the acceptance process for providers and patients, but also incorporated more DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) efforts into the mental health community Started developing software. And so, Chapel Hill-based Inclusive Intake was born. The startup participates in the current cohort of the Launch Chapel Hill Accelerator.
Inclusive Intakes is modernizing the process of capturing patient information in a more human-friendly and digital way instead of standard health forms to fill out.
“This technology allows us to individualize or personalize our intake,” says Kehnbrink.
Building an inclusive intake is centered around adolescent mental health and seeks to mitigate the mental health crisis among young people, said Kembrink. Rather than teens feeling interrogated, Kehnbrink says his interactive media helps mental health providers better understand who they’re connecting with before the first session. I hope to become
“There are countless opportunities for me to say the wrong thing,” added Kembrink. He said assessing a patient’s needs through the screen gives providers more information on how to customize patient care.
Potential users of the site can initially specify which group they belong to, such as “teens”, “college undergraduates”, or “parents of teens”. Then choose a guide to walk you through the interactive process virtually. This is where her DEI focus for startups lies.
These guides are intended to add representation to the process, so patients feel more comfortable undergoing mental health assessments with someone they identify with.
One problem Kehnbrink pointed out as a representative of the field of psychology is that only 3% of psychiatrists are black, and only a quarter of those see adolescent patients. He added that it would be years before we saw a diversity of providers in the mental health field, but using a digital “guide” in the intake process is a step in the right direction.
“I think this is what we can do now,” said Cambrink.
Going forward, Kehnbrink plans to employ more diversity in his team so he can expand the number of employees and the number of guides available to users. His startup network is now mostly made up of his own family.
Inclusive Intakes is currently in beta testing at a clinic. Kehnbrink hopes to roll out the software to different clinics in the future to help patients feel more comfortable and providers to access information more efficiently.
Kehnbrink hopes that Inclusive Intakes will become the “gold standard” for patient intake, and eventually plans to use Inclusive Intakes data in mental health research.
Long term, Kehnbrink’s biggest goal is to help the world transition from mental illness to mental health.
