In a previous blog post, we discussed the barriers to better suicide care and why Zero Suicide Institute (ZSI) partnered with Eleos Health. In the webinar “Creating a Brighter Future for Suicide Care”, panelists discussed how Coleman Health Services is using Eleos Health’s augmented intelligence technology, powered by CareOps Automation, to support their work with the ZSI and enhance suicide risk detection and suicide care tools for frontline providers.

How can Augmented Intelligence Improve Suicide Care?

The American Medical Association (AMA) endorsed the term “augmented intelligence” as technology that assists providers, rather than replacing them. The benefits include enhancing patient care, improving population health, reducing overall costs, and boosting professional satisfaction. The use of augmented intelligence is expanding in behavioral healthcare, particularly to address workforce challenges. 

Eleos Health’s augmented intelligence technology is trained by machine learning (ML) algorithms and clinical experts to detect the use of evidence-based techniques automatically through Natural Language Understanding (NLU), as applied to behavioral health conversations. Providers using Eleos Health’s augmented intelligence platform have been able to increase their use of evidence-based care techniques by over 30% while reducing documentation time significantly, often by more than 50%. 

Zero Suicide Framework represents a holistic approach to suicide care using specific evidence-based practices. Eleos Health is training its machine learning models to accurately identify and analyze use of Zero Suicide in behavioral health conversations. In addition, Eleos Health is working with Zero Suicide Institute to identify suicide risk factors, going beyond standard self-reported assessments to automatically identify these factors in behavioral health sessions. The goal is to enable organizations to identify suicide risk more quickly and render more effective, evidence-based suicide care through objective session feedback and analytics that empower frontline providers and their supervisors. 

How are leaders implementing Augmented Intelligence to Improve Suicide Care? 

Coleman Health Services, which is beginning its implementation of Eleos Health, provides mental health, substance use, residential and rehabilitation services to underserved communities in Ohio. They manage two 988 call centers and also the 988 text and chat functions for the entire state. After receiving a Zero Suicide Grant, Coleman has worked to incorporate the seven elements of Zero Suicide into their workflows, enabling them to provide a better continuity of care by connecting incarcerated individuals and those receiving inpatient care with quality outpatient treatment. They plan to use Eleos Health to reinforce the use of these best practices. 

In addition, Coleman is working with Eleos Health to analyze suicide risk factors in order to improve detection. In an initial analysis of the charts of 50 Coleman patients who died by suicide since 2018, patterns in demographics and common topics of discussion such as substance use, relationships, communication skills, coping skills, recovery from substance use, and setting up personal goals were identified. Through the Eleos analysis, Coleman was able to determine which topics tended to be most dominant in those who would later die by suicide. This type of data will enable Coleman to create more targeted interventions for patients with suicidal ideation.

Once Eleos is fully implemented, Hattie Tracy, President and CEO of Coleman Health, anticipates a significant boost to their capabilities in terms of suicide prevention.  According to Tracy, “When I think about Eleos, I think of it as a clinical decision support system on steroids. Its goal is to help clinicians be better tomorrow than they are today. Eleos gives clinicians tools to focus on the things that only they can do and not the minutia of administration, data, and implementing notes.” Tracy adds, “We know that the workforce shortage is not going away anytime soon. So we really have to focus on how can we utilize technology to make us better [and] more efficient.”

Final Thoughts

According to Dennis Morrison, PhD and Clinical Strategist at Eleos, “There are few things that we do in behavioral healthcare that are more important than suicide prevention. Many of us who were trained as clinicians were trained to believe that suicide is inevitable if someone is highly motivated – and that this is an unfortunate cost of doing business for providers. The Zero Suicide Initiative has shown that neither assumption is true.” After implementing Zero Suicide, Coleman has been able to identify gaps in treatment workflows and make the necessary adjustments to save lives. Incorporating Eleos to support Zero Suicide will greatly amplify Coleman’s ability to quickly identify and treat high-risk patients.

The experts behind Zero Suicide believe that preventing suicide should be part of the job for all healthcare and healthcare affiliated organizations, including settings from primary care, to foster care, to higher learning institutions. Organizations all over the world have worked with the training materials provided in the Zero Suicide Toolkit to help all healthcare providers become adept at preventing suicide.

To learn more about how Eleos Health is supporting the mission of the Zero Suicide initiative at Coleman Health, watch the full “Creating a Brighter Future for Suicide Care” webinar on-demand by clicking the button below. 

If you plan to attend NatCon2023, you can attend the workshop “Creating a Brighter Future for Suicide Care: Equipping Frontline Providers with Augmented Intelligence” on Monday, May 1, 2023 from 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM PT.