Everything You Need to Know Before You Decide
Your clinician runs their practice on the Allia platform. One of the optional features Allia offers is an AI tool to support your care.
Whether to use AI is a decision you and your clinician make together, and nobody should feel pressure in either direction. This page explains what the feature does and what happens to your information, along with the choices you have.
What the AI Does
If you consent to the use of AI, the audio of your session becomes text as you speak. Each piece of audio is destroyed as soon as it's converted, so there is no saved recording, though audio does exist for the seconds it takes to become words. What's kept is the transcript, which is a written record of the conversation that reads like a movie script.
From that transcript, AI drafts a session note for your clinician. That note looks just like the same kind of note clinicians have always written after appointments. Your clinician reviews and makes edits, and they are the only one who decides what your written record says. The AI can also suggest things for your clinician to consider, like a possible diagnosis for your treatment plan, but your clinician is the one who decides on every aspect of your care.
There is no chatbot involved, and no AI makes any decisions about your care.
What’s In It For You
If your clinician isn't typing or writing notes while you talk, they may be able to pay closer attention to your conversation. The note is drafted from a transcript instead of from memory at the end of a long day, so it might be more accurate.
AI suggestions can help make sure clinicians don’t overlook anything, surfacing symptoms, treatment plans or resources/referrals that are likely to be helpful for you.
Allia’s AI models also monitor your transcripts for patterns that research links to changes in mental health. Studies have found, for example, that people sliding toward depression start saying “I” and “me” more often and using fewer positive words, and that all-or-nothing words like “always” and “never” show up more in people struggling with anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts. Shifts like these often appear before a person notices the change in themselves, and if your clinician uses AI, Allia tracks them across your sessions and flags them for your clinician.
What Happens to Your Data
The AI generates a session note, which is a summary. That summary becomes part of your medical record, when your clinician reviews and signs the note, because your clinician is required to keep a record of your care.
The transcript is the word-for-word version. It stays in your chart unless your clinician deletes it, and deleting it removes it completely so it cannot be retrieved by anyone. Many clinicians delete transcripts once the session note is finished. You can ask yours how they handle it.
Deleting the transcript does not delete the session note, and it is not supposed to.
Who Can See Your Information
Your clinician can see your transcript, but nobody at Allia can. Transcripts and notes are encrypted, which means they are scrambled so that only your clinician can read them. People who work at Allia can see usage information, like the fact that a note was opened on a certain date, but never what anything says.
Your sessions are never used to train AI models and are never sold. They are not used for research or marketing either. Your consent only covers the use of AI to help your provider draft notes and support your care by surfacing suggestions and flagging patterns. If that ever changed, you would be asked first.
What Your Options Are
AI transcription stays off unless you say yes. If you say no, your clinician writes notes the way clinicians always have, and your care is the same either way.
Allia has providers of all kinds, from psychiatrists to therapists to social workers. If you see more than one, you can make different decisions about AI use for each. You might want AI at your appointments with your psychiatrist but not your therapy sessions, or the reverse.
You can also decide session by session, or partway through one. Your clinician can turn transcription off during an appointment and back on, and your screen shows when it is on. Some people keep most of a session transcribed and pause it for the parts they want off paper.
Other Questions You Might Have
What if my records are subpoenaed?
Medical records can be subpoenaed whether or not AI is involved. However, therapy notes are often subject to special protections. What is new here is the transcript, which only exists until your clinician deletes it. You can talk to your clinician about their practices around transcript deletion.
What does "HIPAA compliant" mean?
HIPAA is the federal privacy law that sets rules for how health information is stored and shared, and who is allowed to access it. Compliant means Allia is built to meet those rules and is legally accountable for following them.
How is this different from a therapy app that keeps everything?
Some companies deliver therapy themselves, and the session data belongs to them. Allia is a platform your clinician is in charge of, which is why the transcript sits under your clinician's control and can be deleted by them.