Wysa & Imperial College London Secure GBP 5.3 Mn to Test AI Mental Health Tool for Rural Indian Girls

The research consortium brings together Imperial College London, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Milaan Foundation and the University of Cambridge.

Wysa has secured GBP 5.3 Mn to adapt and evaluate an AI mental health tool for adolescent girls in rural India, in partnership with Imperial College London and Indian academic and community organisations.

The collaboration, funded by Wellcome, focuses on scaling a clinically validated digital intervention designed to address anxiety and low mood in low-resource settings.

The AI mental health tool will be delivered through Wysa’s existing platform, which combines artificial intelligence with human support to guide users through evidence-based psychological techniques.

Wysa, a Boston-based digital mental health startup, used by more than seven million people across 105 countries, already works with health systems including the UK’s NHS and public programmes in Asia. The company’s “phygital AI” approach blends automated chat-based support with human guidance when needed.

Chaitali Sinha, Chief Clinical and Research & Development Officer at Wysa and Principal Investigator on the study, said, “This funding allows us to go far beyond simple translation. By working closely with academic and community partners, we aim to co-design a digital intervention that is not only clinically effective, but genuinely usable and relevant for adolescent girls living in rural India.”

The newly funded study has begun mapping the cultural, social and technological realities shaping girls’ access to digital mental health support in rural India.

Insights from this groundwork will inform how Wysa’s AI mental health tool is adapted in language, tone, design and delivery. The intervention will then be tested for effectiveness, feasibility and acceptability in real-world low-to-middle-income contexts.

Professor Ceire Costelloe said: “This project sits at the intersection of AI, data science, digital health and global mental health equity. Our role at Imperial is to ensure that AI-enabled interventions are properly evaluated using real-world data, and implemented in ways that are ethical, transparent and responsive to local context. This is essential if digital mental health tools are to deliver meaningful impact at the scale needed.”

Miranda Wolpert, Director of Mental Health at Wellcome, added: “We are delighted to support Wysa in their work to adapt and scale up this evidence-based digital intervention to address anxiety and depression in adolescent girls across rural India. This funding was awarded as part of our call to find the best ways to develop and scale digital innovations for early intervention.”

The research consortium brings together Imperial College London, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Milaan Foundation and the University of Cambridge. Imperial will lead on scientific design, evaluation and digital health methodology, ensuring the AI mental health tool is clinically robust, ethically deployed and responsive to real-world data.

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