Putting responsible AI at the heart of two groundbreaking digital health applications
We assessed fairness, privacy, and usability to strengthen Koa Health’s mental health and wellbeing products.
Digital health • EU/US • 2021 audit
Koa Health is a clinician-founded global digital mental health company delivering evidence-based therapeutic solutions and scalable wellbeing support.
The audit focused on two products: Koa Foundations, a self-help app for managing stress, sleep, anxiety and resilience, and Koa Mindset, a CBT-based tool to help users manage symptoms of depression.
Problem and stakes
Both apps support personal wellbeing at home and at work. Although not clinical treatments, they handle highly sensitive data.
For Koa Health, ethics and patient safety are central. Data privacy, fairness, and responsible AI are non-negotiable. To ensure this, Koa commissioned Eticas to conduct an independent ethics and algorithmic audit—bringing transparency and external oversight to their review process.
What we did
Eticas assessed the apps across four dimensions:
- Ethics: responsible, fair design and content.
- Data management: privacy, consent, and information security.
- Desirability: how appealing and useful users find the apps.
- Acceptability: whether they feel appropriate, inclusive, and trustworthy.
Methods included literature reviews, internal document analysis, team interviews, and hands-on evaluation of each app’s data flows and user experience. User testing, including feedback from people with mental health conditions, informed findings on accessibility and inclusivity.
Discoveries
Foundations showed strong ethical design but needed clearer communication of data use, better accessibility for vulnerable users, and more long-term evidence of impact.
Mindset performed well on privacy and ethics but required clearer data-sharing policies, improved consent for vulnerable users, and stronger support for clinician–patient communication.
Turning discoveries into action
As a result of thehe audit, Koa Health took several concrete actions to strengthen the ethical and operational integrity of its products.
- Simpler, clearer communication: improving readability and accessibility of user terms.
- Transparent data practices: improving visibility and contractual clarity around data use.
- Fairness and inclusion: enhancing bias-prevention, inclusivity in design, and strengthening long-term evidence collection to encompass ethical concerns.
Koa’s ethical approach was highlighted as an important contribution to it winning a Well-being Trailblazer award from the Wellness Council of America in 2022.
“Working with Eticas helped us turn our ethical commitments into measurable actions. We’ve made our products more accessible, strengthened privacy and fairness, and built ethics into how we innovate. It’s not just about compliance—it’s about earning and keeping users’ trust.”
— Oliver Smith, Strategy Director and Head of Ethics, Koa Health