Formed Consortium with 6 Institutions Including Hanyang University
Utilizing AI Chatbot and Platform Featuring Emotional Diary
KT announced on the 5th that it will participate in the "Super Large-scale Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based Psychological Care Service Support Project" led by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA).
For this project, KT formed a consortium with six organizations: Hanyang University, Hanyang University Hospital, Seongdong-gu Mental Health Welfare Center, Korea Suicide Prevention Association, Korea Violence and Abuse Prevention Association, and SelectStar. Together with AI engineers and medical experts in fields such as brain cognitive science, behavioral research, and psychiatry, they plan to establish a foundation for mental health prevention and management.
To this end, the KT consortium will carry out the following over approximately four years from this year until 2027: ▲building, developing, and verifying evidence-based mental health services ▲establishing a foundation for providing mental health services to the public ▲formulating concrete demonstration and commercialization plans for public dissemination.
In this project, an AI mental health platform, whose functions have been enhanced through collaboration between KT and Hanyang University’s Digital Healthcare Center, will be utilized. Since January, the two institutions have jointly participated in the Ministry of Science and ICT project "Development of Non-face-to-face Mental Health Prevention and Management Platform Technology," securing multimodal data and research expertise. The platform incorporates content such as an LLM (Large Language Model)-based "AI chatbot," "emotion diary," and "surveys." Users can check their mental health status and manage it through customized activity content like webtoons, meditation, and games based on their self-assessment results. High-risk users can receive recommendations for psychological counseling centers or medical institutions near their residence.
KT plans to analyze the "real-world data (actual clinical usage data)" accumulated during the demonstration process to prepare various customized activity contents for mental health management. Additionally, the service’s effectiveness will be continuously verified and enhanced through "multimodal evaluation AI" technology, which predicts and infers users’ mental health using multiple data sources.
In the early stages of the project, demonstrations will be conducted targeting local governments and public institution workers, with plans to later expand the service to the general public.
Yoo Yong-gyu, Executive Director of KT’s Strategic New Business Planning Division, said, "KT will successfully carry out this Ministry of Science and ICT and NIPA project and present a new paradigm in the field of mental health."
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