AI in Medicine: AI That Talks to Patients: From Therapy Bots to Symptom Collection – Hosted by the Geisel Academy of Educators and Scholars

Thursday, January 7, 2027, 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM, Webinar

AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™ (1.00 hours), ACPE Contact Hours (1.00 hours), ANCC Nursing Contact Hours (1.00 hours), ASWB Social Work Credit(s) (1.00 hours), CDR Dietetic CPEU(s) (1.00 hours), CME-Designated Participation Credit (1.00 hours)

Conversational AI now reaches patients directly, through mental health chatbots, symptom triage, and intake platforms, and is among the least regulated applications of language models in medicine. Dr. Jacobson led the development of Therabot, the first generative AI therapy chatbot to complete a randomized controlled trial, published in NEJM AI in 2025. This session follows that tool through its full course, from clinical need through design, fine-tuning, trial, and safety monitoring, and sets it against the wider landscape of triage and symptom-collection systems.

Presenter

Nicholas Jacobson, PhD
Assoc. Professor, Biomedical Data Science
Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College

Dr. Nick Jacobson is an associate professor in the departments of Biomedical Data Science, Psychiatry, and Computer Science at Dartmouth College’s Geisel School of Medicine. He serves as the Director of the Treatment Development and Evaluation Core within the Center for Technology and Behavioral Health and leads the AI and Mental Health: Innovation in Technology Guided Healthcare (AIM HIGH) Laboratory. He is also the co-founder, with Dr. Michael V. Heinz, of Therabot Labs, LLC, a Dartmouth College spinout advancing generative AI-delivered psychotherapy.

Driven by a passion to transform mental health care through technology, Dr. Jacobson focuses on harnessing artificial intelligence and passive sensor data from smartphones and wearable devices to develop scalable, personalized interventions for anxiety and depression. His expertise lies in creating personalized just-in-time adaptive interventions and advancing quantitative tools that enable this work.

A pioneer in the field, Dr. Jacobson developed Therabot, a generative AI therapy chatbot crafted over more than seven years, predating the release of ChatGPT by years. Developed with over 100,000 human hours by the Jacobson Lab, Therabot represents a significant advancement in digital therapeutics. In the first randomized controlled trial of a fully generative AI therapy chatbot, published in the New England Journal of Medicine - AI (NEJM AI), Therabot demonstrated substantial reductions in symptoms of major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and feeding and eating disorders. Participants reported exceptional therapeutic alliance, comparable to human therapists. Dr. Jacobson’s perspective on generative AI as a way to scale precision, evidence-based psychotherapy was published in Science.

Webinar Link

1. Describe how a conversational AI system for healthcare is designed, fine-tuned, and validated, using Therabot as a case study, including evaluating the strengths and limitations of its randomized controlled trial.
2. Identify the safety, ethical, and regulatory challenges specific to conversational AI in clinical settings, including therapeutic relationship formation, suicidal ideation detection, and liability.
3. Describe at least three clinical applications of conversational AI beyond mental health, including symptom triage, patient intake, and post-discharge follow-up, and evaluate their readiness for deployment.

There is no fee for attending this Webinar, and pre-registration is not required. You will find the Webinar link above on this page.

In support of improving patient care, Dartmouth Health is jointly accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), to provide continuing education for the healthcare team. 

American Medical Association (AMA)
Dartmouth Health designates this Live Activity for a maximum of 1.00 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits^TM. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC)
Dartmouth Health designates this Live Activity for a maximum of 1.00 ANCC contact hours. 

Accreditation Council of Pharmacy Education (ACPE)
Dartmouth Health designates this knowledge-based activity for a maximum of 1.00 hour. Credit will be provided to NABP CPE Monitor within 60 days after the activity completion.

UAN JA0000201-0000-27-004-L99-P | UAN JA0000201-0000-27-004-L99-T

Pharmacists/Pharmacy Technicians Account Setup
If you wish to apply for ACPE credit, you will need to enter your NABP ePID# and Date of Birth in your CE Profile by following these steps:

• Log in to Dartmouth Health's CE portal.

• From the My Account Menu select Profile.

• Enter your Date of Birth (Month and Day)

• In the Credentials section, select NABP ePID# from the drop down and enter your ID number

• Scroll down to the bottom of the screen and click Submit

Social Workers (ASWB)
As a Jointly Accredited Organization, Dartmouth Health is approved to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Organizations, not individual courses, are approved under this program. Regulatory boards are the final authority on courses accepted for continuing education credit. Social workers completing this course receive 1.00 general continuing education credits.

Social Worker Account Setup
If you wish to apply for ASWB credit, you will need to enter your license number in your CE Profile by following these steps:

• Log in to Dartmouth Health's CE portal.

• From the My Account Menu, select Profile.

• Ensure your degree and profession are accurately reflected

• Enter the state license type, License #, and Expiration date

• Scroll down to the bottom of the screen and click Submit

Commission on Dietetic Registration (CDR)
Completion of this RD/DTR profession-specific or IPCE activity awards CPEUs (1 IPCE credit = 1 CPEU).
If the activity is dietetics related but not targeted to RDs or DTRs, CPEUs may be claimed which are commensurate with participation in contact hours (1 hour/60 minutes = 1 CPEU).
RDs and DTRs are to select activity type 102 in their Activity Log.

All other learners may claim CME-designated participation credit. Consult your professional licensing board regarding the applicability and acceptance of CME-designated participation credit for programs certified for credit by organizations accredited by Joint Accreditation for Interprofessional Education.

Receiving Credit
The following steps must be completed in order to receive credit for this event:

• Attend the event or session(s). Text the code provided during the session to 833-884-3375 to verify your attendance.

• Complete the online evaluation (located under My Account in the top menu) - Must be submitted within 30 days after the activity

Provider Contact Information
Provider contact information for questions regarding accreditation of the activity:

Center for Learning and Professional Development
ACE Office
Dartmouth Health
[email protected]

Mitigation of Relevant Financial Relationships

Dartmouth Health adheres to the ACCME’s Standards for Integrity and Independence in Accredited Continuing Education.  Any individuals in a position to control the content of a CE activity, including planners, faculty, authors, or others are required to disclose all financial relationships with ineligible companies^.  All relevant financial relationships have been mitigated prior to the commencement of the activity.

^Ineligible Company is any entity whose primary business purpose is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients.