Situation

Care organizations are always looking for ways to understand how their patients are truly feeling—beyond clinical visits. Many have adopted a “diary” system where patients can freely write about their well-being, experiences, and emotions each week. These diaries are a way for patients to express themselves without constraints, offering care teams valuable insights into their journey.

Complication

But the format—unstructured free text—created challenges. Care coordinators had to manually review each entry to spot critical terms like “suicide,” “self-harm,” or “abuse.” As the volume of diaries grew, this process became overwhelming, leaving room for missed signals or delayed responses. The sheer time required for screening put both the team and patient safety under pressure.

Resolution

Our customers use Awell to make patient diary systems safer and more efficient while keeping them as open and expressive as before. Patients continue to submit free-text entries, sharing their thoughts and feelings in their own words. The difference? Awell’s AI reviews every entry and automatically categorizes it as either “Needs Intervention” or “No Intervention.” Trigger words like “suicide” or “self-harm” are flagged immediately, alerting care coordinators when urgent action is required.

Care teams no longer need to manually sift through endless diary entries or worry about missing red flags. Instead, they can focus their time on meaningful interventions, confident that every patient’s voice is heard and no critical signals are overlooked.