Interview With Luis F Voloch Co-founder and CEO of Jimini Health
Welcome to another edition of Founder Spotlight with Luis F Voloch, Co-founder and CEO of Jimini Health, a New York-based mental health startup founded in 2023. Jimini Health aims to radically improve the efficacy of mental health care by combining teletherapy sessions with personalized AI support, featuring an AI therapy assistant called Sage that works under clinical supervision alongside licensed clinicians to enhance therapy outcomes.
Before Jimini Health, Luis Voloch co-founded Immunai, an AI-driven cancer immunotherapy company, and has experience in biotech and AI. Luis is also a lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business, teaching a course on entrepreneurship and management in AI-heavy companies. Jimini Health’s mission is to integrate responsible AI to support clinicians rather than replace them, offering continuous, higher-quality mental health care.
Join us as we dive into the inspiring journey of Jimini Health.
Welcome to the Founder Spotlight, Luis! Can you share the journey that led you to create Jimini Health? What motivated you to enter the mental health space, and what personal experiences shaped that decision?
I co-founded Jimini to combine my passions for direct patient impact and building AI applications. My larger goal is to help patients improve their mental health by leveraging clinician expertise and large language models to truly deliver much better, personalized, customized care.
How has your background in data science and AI influenced your approach to mental health care?
My experience at the intersection of AI, healthcare, and biology has made us take a much more scientifically rigorous approach than most companies in the field. I believe there is a potential for building a Genetech-like company in mental health, powered by AI.
What is the core mission of Jimini Health, and how do you envision it evolving in the coming years?
Jimini Health is the first solution of its kind combining virtual therapy with Artificial Intelligence (AI) to patients and clinicians. Jimini’s mission is to radically improve the efficacy of mental health care across the world.
Can you explain how Jimini Health’s AI assistant, Sage, works in conjunction with traditional therapy methods? How can we ensure that using AI in mental health care stays ethical and puts patients first?
Jimini Health is leveraging AI, mobile, and deep clinical innovation to develop radically more effective, engaging, and scalable mental health solutions, a critical and necessary innovation when anxiety, depression, and loneliness top the list of unmet medical needs. In 2024, Jimini launched the first AI-enhanced psychotherapeutic service of its kind; our AI Sage helps therapists to provide personalized therapy for patients struggling with anxiety. Our efficacy, retention, and customer satisfaction are already far, far better than industry norms.
What specific gaps in mental health care are you aiming to address with your platform?
Psychotherapy has been in a rut for decades; with the exception of the recent convenience of telehealth options, the efficacy of psychotherapy hasn’t changed much since the dawn of CBT. Jimini presents a radical departure; while we leverage CBT, our use of mobile and AI allows us to dramatically rethink the structure of therapy, providing patients with an “always on” service and personalized, AI-enhanced exercises that improve efficacy and retention.
Congratulations on recent $8 million pre-seed funding! How do you plan to utilize this investment to enhance your services?
This funding will allow us to scale our efforts in delivering innovative, patient-centered mental health solutions. We plan to enhance our platform by advancing its AI capabilities, expanding clinical oversight to ensure continued efficacy, and integrating more personalized tools to support diverse mental health needs.
What are some challenges you’ve faced in integrating AI into therapeutic practices, and how have you overcome them?
A large challenge has been seeing many apps on the App Store launching clinically unsafe therapy bots. We are committed to doing our work in the most safe way possible, and will continue releasing products only upon thorough validation.
Looking ahead, what are your long-term goals for Jimini Health, both in terms of technology and patient impact?
In the medium and long term, as our AI improves and can provide more services with more autonomy, we hope to improve not only efficacy but also access; if we can take 80-90% of the human effort out of providing care to some lower acuity patients, we can reduce costs and bring mental health services to vastly more people than currently receive care.
What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to innovate in the healthcare sector?
My advice to aspiring healthcare entrepreneurs is to focus on solving real patient and provider problems with solutions that are innovative, ethical, and clinically effective. And work with people you love working with!
