The reluctance of mental health tech companies to call it what it is... Wow.
If you're generating notes from a therapy session using a transcript of that therapy session, a recording of the audio of that therapy session took place.
Does it make the therapist uncomfortable if it's described as "recording"?
Yeah, probably!
Does it make the client uncomfortable if it's described as "recording"?
Yeah, probably!
But attempting to label and market it as anything other than "recording" is not being transparent. And that leads to the therapist not being fully transparent with their client when asking for informed consent.
It doesn't matter if you then deleted the audio recording afterward. Your tool recorded the therapy session.
It doesn't matter if you captured and processed a series of smaller audio files throughout the therapy session -- those smaller chunks of audio were still recorded and sent elsewhere.
There is not a transcription without some sort of recording taking place.
And the desire of mental health tech companies to push back on this term of "recording" tells us what we already know (and tells us that they agree!) -- that recording therapy sessions should be avoided! For so many reasons!
If you're recording the therapy session, please state that explicitly. Terms like "ambient listening" or "AI documentation" or "AI scribe" or a very generic "transcription" are not sufficient to inform all parties involved.
And by the way, this is why Quill does not record therapy sessions.
And this is why Quill does accurately use the term "recording" when we talk about how we specifically use audio. As one of our input options, we will take a minute or two summary of a session (provided by the therapist after the session is over). The therapist hits a button labeled "record", even. And once submitted, we transcribe that audio recording and use that summary transcription to generate the note (or other documentation).
It's not that hard to be transparent about what you're doing.
And for the sake of therapists and clients everywhere, we hope others will choose to be more transparent too.
