Mental healthcare in India is beginning to test whether artificial intelligence can add a measurable layer to one of medicine’s most subjective assessments. INSIGHT – The Mind Clinic in Pune has integrated Emoscape, the medical-grade emotion AI platform developed by Pune-based technology firm Nihilent, into its psychiatric and psychological assessment workflow.

The initiative is led by Dr Hamza Hussain, Founder of INSIGHT – The Mind Clinic and Head of the Mental Health department at Ruby Hospital, Pune. The clinic said the goal is to bring greater objectivity to how patients’ emotional states are detected and tracked, and to support more personalised care.

How Emoscape works

Emoscape uses a short, non-invasive interaction of about one minute in front of a standard webcam. The platform analyses subtle micro-movements across the face, eye region, head and upper body, and generates a structured emotional profile of the patient.

At INSIGHT, these profiles are not used in isolation. They are read alongside the patient’s clinical history, symptoms, behaviour and ongoing treatment, as part of existing psychiatric and psychological evaluations.

• Objective input: adds a measurable view of emotional states to interviews, questionnaires and psychometric tools
• Periodic reassessment: lets clinicians track how a patient’s emotional state changes through the course of treatment
• Patient-facing visuals: patients can see a visual representation of their emotional profile and how it shifts over time

Why it matters for psychiatry

Psychiatric assessment has traditionally depended on clinical interviews, observation, questionnaires and what patients are able to recognise and put into words. Differences in language, comprehension and communication can shape how emotional states are understood, a challenge that is especially relevant in a multilingual country like India.

“Psychiatric and psychological assessments give us important insights into a patient, but understanding emotions can still depend significantly on what an individual is able to recognise and communicate. Emoscape allows us to introduce greater objectivity into this aspect of assessment,” Dr Hussain said. He added that measurable insight can help clinicians explore what patients find difficult to articulate, and follow how that state changes during care.

Sandeep Pendurkar, Business Director, Nihilent Limited, said the platform was built on the idea that emotions “should not have to remain entirely subjective”, and that its use by an experienced psychiatrist in real patient care is an important step in making it meaningful to both clinicians and patients.

Clinician-led, not clinician-replacing

The clinic has positioned the technology as a complement to clinical expertise rather than a substitute for it. The emotional profile is interpreted by the care team within the context of each individual, feeding into a structured pathway of assessment, personalised intervention, periodic reassessment and long-term progress tracking.

INSIGHT is an integrated mental healthcare clinic that works across age groups, combining psychiatric care, psychological therapies and counselling, neuropsychological assessments, lifestyle psychiatry and integrative approaches. Nihilent, founded in 2000, is a consulting, products and solutions company focused on digital transformation, data analytics and technology.

As India’s digital health ecosystem expands beyond records and teleconsultation into clinical decision support, early real-world deployments such as this one will be closely watched for evidence on accuracy, privacy safeguards and how such tools fit into everyday mental healthcare.

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