Digital mental health promises easier access. Proving that it is safe is the harder part. Find out how AI4Health.Cro team assisted Helfy through Testing Before Investing support.
Croatian healthtech company Helfy is developing a platform for remote psychological support. Before expanding, it used AI4Health.Cro’s Testing Before Investing service to examine whether the technology could meet the practical, clinical and privacy requirements of mental healthcare.
For people seeking psychological support, access can depend heavily on geography, mobility, available time and the number of professionals working nearby.
Digital platforms may reduce some of those barriers by allowing counselling sessions to take place remotely. But mental healthcare is not an ordinary video-call service. Platforms must protect highly sensitive information, remain technically stable and support interactions in which privacy, trust and continuity are essential.
This is the challenge facing Helfy, a Croatian digital health company developing an interactive audio-visual platform that connects people seeking psychological and therapeutic support with verified mental health professionals.
The platform is intended to make counselling more accessible and flexible, particularly for people who cannot easily travel or attend appointments during conventional working hours. It also gives therapists tools to organise their work and support clients outside their immediate geographical area.
Before moving towards further investment and expansion, however, Helfy needed to test whether the platform worked reliably in conditions closer to real clinical use.
Through AI4Health.Cro’s Testing Before Investing service, the company entered a four-month process of experimentation, piloting and expert evaluation.
Testing beyond technical performance
The contracted service was provided by Magdalena Clinic, while the validation was carried out in collaboration with Vrapče University Psychiatric Hospital, one of Croatia’s specialist institutions in mental health.
The involvement of mental health professionals was important because a platform can perform well technically while still failing to meet the needs of therapists or clients.
A remote mental health service must support more than a stable connection. Users need to understand how appointments are arranged, what happens if communication is interrupted, how personal information is stored and who can access it.
Therapists, meanwhile, need workflows that fit professional practice rather than creating additional administrative work.
The evaluation therefore examined the platform from several perspectives. These included functionality, technical stability, security protocols, compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation and the quality of the user experience.
Professionals with extensive experience of working with patients took part in the process, allowing the assessment to consider how the technology might function in actual mental health support rather than only in a controlled technical test.
Privacy as part of the care model
Data protection is a central issue for every digital health platform, but mental health information can be particularly sensitive.
A system must protect communication between therapists and clients while also making clear how personal data are collected, processed and retained. Poorly designed security or consent procedures can undermine trust even when the clinical service itself is appropriate.
For Helfy, the testing process provided an opportunity to examine these questions before further scale-up.
The resulting evaluation report offered evidence-based recommendations for the next stage of development. The findings helped the company strengthen areas including secure communication, data protection and the organisation of user journeys for both professionals and clients.
This kind of early intervention can prevent design decisions from becoming embedded in a product before their weaknesses are properly understood.
Security and privacy are more difficult to add after a platform has already acquired users, expanded its functions or been integrated into professional workflows. Testing them during development reduces the risk of costly changes later.
Designing for two groups of users
Digital mental health platforms must serve at least two distinct groups: people seeking support and the professionals providing it.
Their needs overlap, but they are not identical.
Clients may prioritise ease of use, discretion, appointment flexibility and confidence that they are communicating with an appropriately qualified professional.
Therapists require reliable communication, clear scheduling tools, secure handling of information and a system that does not disrupt the therapeutic relationship.
A platform that is simple for clients but difficult for professionals to manage is unlikely to be sustainable. Equally, a system built around institutional requirements may fail if people find it confusing, impersonal or difficult to access.
The validation process allowed Helfy to examine both sides of this relationship.
Rather than assessing the platform only as a software product, the testing considered it as an environment in which a sensitive professional service would be delivered.
That distinction is important. Digital health products do not simply transmit information. They shape how users communicate, what they understand about the service and whether they feel confident enough to continue using it.
Testing before scaling
For an early-stage healthtech company, external validation can be difficult to obtain.
Clinical institutions have limited time, while startups may lack the relationships and credibility required to engage experienced healthcare professionals. As a result, products can be developed for long periods without meaningful input from the people who will eventually use them.
AI4Health.Cro’s Testing Before Investing service was designed to reduce that gap.
For Helfy, the programme created a structured setting in which the platform could be reviewed by relevant experts before the company committed further resources to development and expansion.
The outcome was not a guarantee that the platform would succeed. Nor could a four-month pilot answer every question about long-term clinical effectiveness, user adoption or commercial sustainability.
It did, however, provide the company with a more reliable basis for deciding what needed to be improved next.
This is the practical value of testing before investment. It allows companies to identify weaknesses while they are still manageable and to distinguish between assumptions made by developers and requirements identified through professional use.
Access must be matched by trust
Remote mental health support has the potential to reach people who may otherwise face long waits, travel difficulties or limited local provision.
But increased access is valuable only when users can trust the platform through which support is delivered.
That trust depends on several factors: the credibility of the professionals, the protection of personal information, the reliability of the technology and the quality of the overall experience.
Helfy’s work with AI4Health.Cro shows why digital mental health platforms need to be evaluated across all of these areas rather than treated simply as communication tools.
The project brought together a technology company, clinical expertise and a structured validation process. In doing so, it helped move the platform from an internally developed product towards a solution shaped by the realities of mental health practice.
For the wider digital health sector, the lesson is straightforward. Promising technology is not enough. Products operating in sensitive areas must show that they can function safely, reliably and in ways that support both professionals and the people seeking care.
Companies developing digital or AI-based healthcare solutions can use AI4Health.Cro’s Testing Before Investing service to evaluate their products in realistic conditions before committing to further development or scale-up. The programme connects companies with relevant technical and healthcare expertise, helping them identify risks, strengthen their solutions and prepare for the next stage of growth.