Needs validation with Region Östergötland - strong recognition from psychologists

On April 8, 2026, we sat down with three psychologists from Region Östergötland for a structured needs validation of Edith's assessment tool. The purpose was simple: does the reality we are building for match the reality psychologists actually live in?

The panel's conclusion was clear. The demand for psychological assessments exceeds the capacity to meet it, a large part of the work is compiling, analyzing and writing, and today's ways of working do not deliver the increase in capacity that is needed. The panel's recognition of the problem was rated as strong.

Time in an assessment is split roughly 50/50 between patient and testing time, and time spent processing, evaluating and writing. The second half is the bottleneck. The anamnesis was singled out as the most time-consuming part of the work, and the process of moving information from records, forms and test results into a finished report was described as both time-consuming and mentally demanding.

Several quotes from the session capture the problem succinctly. Reports are often written more so that the rest of the care system can trust the assessment than for the patient, who is primarily interested in the summary. The most cognitively demanding moment is pulling everything together at the end, particularly when the underlying material is scattered. And an assessment that stretches across two to three months makes it costly to circle back and finalize the report.

The panel rated the problem as high priority. Their reasoning pointed to high explicit expectations that create stress, the difficulty of synthesizing all information into a conclusion, and the experience that administration takes time away from patient contact and treatment. Perspectives the panel felt were missing included certificate writing, reading through medical records, and the fact that administrative work can also serve as a kind of recovery time - something a tool needs to respect, not optimize away.

The panel's overall assessment was to proceed without major changes. That is a clear mandate for us to continue in the direction we have been building toward: a tool that supports the entire assessment flow from conversation to finished report, where the psychologist retains judgement and control, and Edith handles the heavy lifting.

We are grateful to Region Östergötland and the psychologists who took the time to share their working day with us. This kind of early validation is the foundation for building something that actually works in clinical practice - not just on paper.