Transforming Mental Health: An Exclusive Interview with Tanuj Sharma, CEO of Kana, the AI Co-pilot for Mental Healthcare

I had the pleasure of interviewing Tanuj Sharma, Co-founder & CEO of Kana, who aims to revolutionize the accessibility and effectiveness of mental healthcare by leveraging ethical AI and data. With 23 years of experience in the technology industry, including roles at AWS and Rackspace, Tanuj leads Kana’s business management, product design, and marketing efforts. His extensive background in building scalable solutions and businesses worth billions of dollars, combined with over a decade of expertise in AI technologies, positions him perfectly to create real-world solutions for mental healthcare.

What motivated you to launch your startup?

Every year, one in five Americans experiences a serious mental illness, and over 50% are diagnosed with a mental disorder. Despite the high demand, one-third of Americans lack access to mental healthcare. Additionally, 64% of those who do have access avoid seeking help early due to the stigma surrounding mental health. Alarmingly, treatment effectiveness has dropped by 33%, leading to a 40% dropout rate among adolescents and young adults.

Kana was born out of a desire to change this narrative. By enhancing accessibility, reducing stigma, improving treatment effectiveness, and making mental healthcare affordable, Kana aims to avert a multi-generational crisis. Our AI Co-pilot, designed in collaboration with mental healthcare providers and users, integrates seamlessly into the therapy journey. For therapists, it offers AI-powered clinical recommendations for precise diagnosis and treatment planning, revolutionizing therapy outcomes. For patients, it provides evidence-based early interventions, safe education, and discreet condition assessments.

The two co-founders, Tanuj Sharma and Srinivas Palepu, with a collective 45 years of experience in the technology industry, decided to leave their corporate careers to create Kana after witnessing several friends and family members struggle with mental health issues up close. We are leveraging our extensive experience in building enterprise-grade solutions for Fortune 500 firms to address real-world mental health challenges. Kana represents our vision to create a socioeconomic impact and reduce the burden of the mental healthcare crisis.

What is it that excites you about what you’re building?

Kana, the mental health AI Co-pilot, has the potential to change the way mental healthcare is perceived and delivered. Artificial intelligence will play a crucial role in the future of the mental health industry, and we see Kana at the forefront of this transformation. We are excited about Kana’s ability to break down the barriers of stigma and privacy and provide credible early education and intervention resources. This enables users to assess their self-care and seek professional help digitally.

We are also enthusiastic about Kana’s ability to empower therapists. By providing key patient insights and live recommendations about diagnosis and symptoms, Kana transforms therapists into “super therapists,” freeing them from administrative burdens and allowing them to focus more on their patients.

Despite over $200 billion spent annually on mental healthcare, there’s been little innovation. Kana’s AI-powered solutions fill this gap by reducing mistreatment and misdiagnosis and offering therapists a cutting-edge platform to meet the growing demand for mental health services. Additionally, Kana provides users with a safe and private platform to help them overcome the barriers to accessing mental healthcare.

What has been your biggest challenge when growing your startup?

While Kana’s artificial intelligence solutions have the potential to change the mental healthcare landscape, building trust in AI and data for ethical usage in mental healthcare is our biggest challenge. We plan to overcome this challenge by ensuring a human-in-the-loop design at the core of all our AI solutions. From design to testing to final rollout, we involve therapists and experts in the process to ensure users receive accurate and vetted guidance regarding their symptoms and treatment. Ensuring trust in our solutions through ethical AI and data use, combined with necessary human interventions, is key to building faith and ensuring the accuracy of information shared with users and therapists.

What are your future plans for your startup?

We plan to launch the first version of Kana by the end of Q2 2024, establishing early proof points with both therapists and end-users. By Q4 2024, we aim to release a complete version of Kana that allows users to self-assess and self-care, while providing live recommendations to therapists regarding symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment options. This will enable us to track patient outcomes and improvements end-to-end and recommend necessary course corrections.

In the next 2–3 years, we envision Kana leveraging AI and ML technologies to offer highly personalized mental health plans tailored to individual users based on their behavior, preferences, and mental health history. Kana will help predict potential mental health crises before they happen, enabling proactive intervention and support. Our platform will incorporate gamification elements to enhance user engagement and adherence to mental health plans. We also plan to offer immersive therapy sessions and relaxation experiences through VR and AR, integrate wearable devices to monitor users’ biometric data, and facilitate virtual support groups. Additionally, expanding language support will make mental health resources accessible globally.

If you had to share “words of wisdom” with a founder who’s about to start their own startup, what would they be?

Spend an enormous amount of time researching the customer problem statement. Discovering gaps in understanding the customer context and problem statement can be very expensive if found later in the cycle. Many founders confuse innovation with creating the most cutting-edge technology solutions, but real innovation comes from understanding the customer context and their daily life, and making a real impact on how they will function using the solution you are building.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

The best way to follow me and our startup is via LinkedIn here. We welcome connections and partnerships with industry experts and organizations who share our vision of transforming the mental health landscape.

This was very insightful. Thank you so much for joining us!