KENNESAW, Ga. — Georgia Tech is best known as one of the world’s top engineering, computer science, and mathematics institutes of higher education. Sitting alongside those disciplines are programs that support the physical and mental health of people across the state. A series of articles over the next few months will explore the innovative work the Partnership for Inclusive Innovation (PIN) is supporting in the healthcare sphere.
The first such project is 911 Mental Health Crisis Response Detection and Redirection, housed at Kennesaw State University’s (KSU) Modular Agile Deployment (MAD) Lab, to develop software that helps first responders identify when a 911 caller is having a mental health crisis in order to get them the appropriate care.
“This project, along with other health-related initiatives that PIN is involved with, is a vital part of our mission to support innovation in all areas, for all Georgians,” said PIN Director Debra Lam.
The five-year-old project, a collaboration with local police, fire, and other 911 responders to identify behavioral and mental health crisis cases from 911 calls at scale, accurately, legally, and ethically, is led by Dominic Thomas, associate professor of information systems, program coordinator for the information systems program, and director of the MAD Lab at KSU. It addresses a tremendous need across the state.
In 2023, 29.45% of adults in Georgia reported having mental health issues, including anxiety and depression. That number is on the rise, according to healthcare professionals. Additionally, research shows that more than 4 million people in Georgia — nearly 36% of the state’s population — live in communities that do not have enough access to mental health professionals.
Lack of access is just one reason that people who could benefit from mental or behavioral healthcare often end up in prisons or hospital emergency rooms, where they do not receive the care they need. This PIN project ultimately will help first responders identify people who need more and different help than prison or an ER can provide.
The Partnership’s involvement with the 911 project is as a resource for providing paid interns through the Student Engagement pillar. Two interns worked on the 911 project in 2024, and two more will work on the project this summer. One intern will continue work that was begun by an intern last year, which involves the complex task of taking data on 911 calls and responses from information systems within police and fire departments and making it usable by a police officer in just a few minutes.
The second intern will focus on developing a typology algorithm.
“We have a working algorithm that can identify when behavioral health is likely an issue in a given incident, but what we do not have is an accurate algorithm to then subtype that behavioral health,” Thomas said. “This matters because resourcing is tied to these sub-typings. For example, if somebody’s a veteran, there are pots of resources to apply to. The pots of resources if somebody is suicidal versus psychotic, are two different kinds of resources and responses. And to help the first responders, we want to try to make it as easy as possible for them to quickly get indications so that they can make good decisions.”
2024 intern Shivani Bharadwaz, a KSU alum, worked on the 911 project and spoke about why it was important to her. “I have an interest in mental health issues, behavioral health issues. So, it was really interesting to me that KSU was working on a project like this. I wanted to be part of utilizing technology to create a better system for mental health detection in 911 calls.”
It’s also a project that ties into PIN’s innovation mission.
“If something terrible has happened, we want to give support to a person who has gone through it,” said Cody Cocchi, PIN’s student engagement manager. “But there is not a lot of funding that goes toward preventing the types of bad outcomes that can occur by not sending the proper response when someone is having a mental health crisis.”
This project seeks to reorient how communities approach emergency service calls to create new frameworks when it comes to help in mental health crises, Cocchi said.
“I’ve been told it’s been extremely hard to find funding for this work because it’s idealistic in a sense that a person would call 911, and we don’t just send police,” Cocchi said. “We send a behavioral interventionist that is equipped and skilled to talk this person down and get them the mental health services that they need. That’s why I think this particular funding and project is important.”