How AI Tools for Therapists Are Built: Trust, Data Privacy, and Choosing What to Adopt - An Interview with Ian Knox and Megan Toomey
Ian Knox and Megan Toomey of SimplePractice take therapists behind the scenes of how AI tools for mental health are actually built, trained, and kept secure.
We're in the middle of AI month, and Curt and Katie wanted to move past the buzzwords and talk with the people who actually engineer this technology. As part of the show's partnership with SimplePractice, they sit down with Ian Knox, Chief Product Officer, and Megan Toomey, Sr. Director of Clinical Support AI Product Management, to pull back the curtain on how AI tools for therapists get designed, what "training the model" really means, and how client data is handled.
They get specific about what to evaluate before adopting any AI tool, from vendor trust and HIPAA compliance to data practices, and why note taking is the most mature use case while insurance, scheduling, intake, and referral matching are still emerging. Ian and Megan also take on the fear that AI-first companies want to replace therapists, and explain why clinicians have to stay at the center of care and review anything they put their name on.
This is a grounded, practical conversation for any therapist trying to decide what AI belongs in their practice, and what to be cautious about, without panic or hype.
In this episode, we discuss:
- How an EHR decides which clinician tasks AI is mature enough to help with
- What to evaluate before trusting an AI vendor with client data
- Why "HIPAA compliant" is a floor, not proof of strong security
- What "training the model" does and does not mean, and why SimplePractice says it is not training an LLM on your data
- How transcripts are retained, and the new opt-in for de-identified data
- Why you remain responsible for every AI-assisted note you sign
- How to talk with clients about AI and get meaningful consent
Timestamps:
00:16 - AI month, and why we wanted to talk to people who build AI
01:33 - Who Ian and Megan are
03:21 - SimplePractice's history with AI tools
05:38 - What therapists should know when adding AI to a practice
08:44 - Where clinicians can streamline with AI
12:23 - How to choose which AI features to adopt
16:10 - Why you can't fully trust AI, and best practices
19:29 - What clinicians should know about their data
21:13 - The Trust Center, and "are you here to replace therapists?"
23:55 - How AI systems are trained (the puppy analogy)
27:00 - White-label LLMs and the "golden data set"
29:11 - De-identified transcripts and the opt-in
31:40 - Current tools and the product roadmap
Guest bios:
Ian Knox is Chief Product Officer at SimplePractice, with prior product leadership at Expedia and Microsoft.
Megan Toomey is Sr. Director of Clinical Support AI Product Management at SimplePractice, leading the team building AI tools for behavioral health clinicians, with prior experience at Microsoft and Amazon.
Full show notes and transcript: mtsgpodcast.com
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Voice Over by DW McCann: https://www.facebook.com/McCannDW/
Music by Crystal Grooms Mangano: https://groomsymusic.com/
