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Assessing suicide risk with Neuroflow app

Magellan medical director profiled in health technology article

Caroline Carney, MD, chief medical officer at Magellan Healthcare, recently was featured in a Fast Company article about Neuroflow, a technology platform that behavioral healthcare providers can use to track their patients’ status and assess their risk of suicide.

Health plan members enrolled in the NeuroFlow app complete self-report questionnaires such as the PHQ-9 for depression and the GAD-7 for anxiety. Members also document their experiences in journal format. NeuroFlow uses a type of artificial intelligence (AI) known as natural language processing to analyze members’ journal entries and alert providers about members who may be in urgent need or experiencing a change in mental status.

In recent years, Magellan has begun using the tool as part of a collaborative care model allowing a member’s care team — psychiatrist, primary care provider and case manager — to share information and communicate with each other about members.

“With NeuroFlow we’re able to screen and catch issues more efficiently and get patients into care earlier,” said Dr. Carney in the Fast Company article.

In 2023 Magellan collaborated with NeuroFlow to create a platform with cognitive behavior therapy programs aimed at improving mood, mindfulness and sleep in adults. It found that registration was 124% higher than previous programs, and there was a 41% reduction in anxiety assessment scores and a 24% reduction in depression scores based on PHQ-9 results. In March of this year, Magellan created a similar program for use by teens between the ages of 13 and 17.

According to NeuroFlow’s founder, Christopher Molaro, the system last year alerted its health plan customers to 33,000 people who were at risk of suicide who may have otherwise slipped through the cracks in the healthcare system.