Is an AI scribe better for therapy intakes or follow-ups?

Follow-ups, by a wide margin. A clinician in a psychiatry forum called it useful for follow-ups and abysmal for intakes. Another said it misses large parts of the symptom history, which is most of what an intake is. A psychologist who uses one does not record first sessions at all, so that intake note gets no help. The longest note you write is the one it helps least.

Why are intakes harder?

An intake is long, it wanders, and the parts that matter most are buried inside a story told out of order. One psychiatrist using an institutional tool said it summarised behavioural strategies well but was poor at recognising the diagnostically important parts, and of no use for formulation.

That is not a transcription problem. The words were captured. The judgement about which words matter was not.

Why are follow-ups easier?

A follow-up has a shape: what changed, what you tried, what happens next. The tool is good at that shape, and the stakes of a missed detail are lower because you already hold the history.

What should I do about intakes?

Use your own template for the history and write the formulation yourself, the way you would have anyway. Use the tool, if at all, as a memory aid for collateral details. Check whether your tool caps recording length: one psychiatrist reported a 75-minute limit per recording, which a long intake can hit.

The short version

Use an AI scribe for follow-ups and write intakes yourself, at least for now. The intake is the longest note and the one that most needs judgement. Solanto is being built for therapy practices to write the history and leave the judgement, including the formulation, to you, in Cloud mode or in Private Mode, where the note never leaves the device.

Solanto has not shipped yet. The price is on the page rather than behind a call, and early access is open: solanto.ai/pricing

Ask a colleague which note still keeps them late. It is almost always the intake.