Mental health and wellness software with safety built in
Online therapy platforms, care team dashboards, prescribable digital therapeutics, employee wellbeing tools and meditation apps. Built with crisis paths, privacy and clinical safety at the centre.
What mental health and wellness software has to get right
Mental health software handles some of the most sensitive data there is, and some of its users are at risk. A missed message or a confusing screen is not just a bad experience. The product must know when to bring a person in.
The builds below carry crisis rules, clinical safety reviews and privacy controls into the core design. Where the product makes a medical claim, it is treated as a medical device from the start.
Problems we are asked to fix
The problems teams bring to us, the system that fixes each one and the builds that did it.
Online therapy platform
Therapy practices lose time to scheduling and no-shows.
Booking, sessions and notes in one platform, with crisis rules that route risk to a person straight away.
Employee wellbeing platform
Employers need wellbeing tools that respect privacy.
Stress checks and follow-ups where the employer sees only group results and individual answers stay with the clinician.
Care team dashboard
Mental health care teams lack shared views of risk.
One view of caseload, outcomes and risk for a talking therapies service, with a clinical safety case behind it.
Prescribable digital therapeutic
Apps want reimbursement as digital therapeutics.
A prescribable app with a clinical safety console, built to the medical device and security rules reimbursement needs.
Meditation and sleep app
Meditation apps struggle with retention.
A content studio for the team and growth features with ethical guardrails, staying on the wellness side of the device line.
5 kinds of mental health and wellness system we have built
Each one links the product build behind it, counted from our case studies.
Mental health and wellness products we built
Remanso - Online Therapy Platform with Crisis Rules Built In
Designed and built a clickable psychologist workspace for a Spanish online therapy platform that matches clients with licensed psychologists: today's sessions with a pre-session summary, availability and bookings, a private clinical record per client, and a message inbox that flags risk phrases and replies waiting too long.
Lichtung - Prescribable AI Journaling App with a Clinical Safety Console
Designed and built a clickable clinical console for a prescribable CBT journaling app on the German DiGA pathway: clinical review of every patient-facing text, an AI release register with safety gates and sign-offs, and a crisis detection log that staff review without ever reading a journal entry.
Stepwell - Care Team Dashboard for an NHS Talking Therapies Service
Designed and built a clickable care team dashboard for an NHS Talking Therapies provider in England: each clinician's caseload with risk flags and session-by-session outcome measures, a same-day risk review workflow, and a service view of waiting times and recovery rates against the national standards.
Hidamari - Employee Wellbeing Platform for Stress Checks and Long Working Hours
Designed and built a clickable staff console for a Tokyo HR-tech company's employee wellbeing platform: run the annual stress check, read group analysis that never shows a group under 10 people, follow physician interviews and track long working hours, with each piece of health information kept with the people allowed to see it.
Luwte - Meditation and Sleep App with a Content Studio and Ethical Growth Guardrails
Designed and built a clickable content studio console for a Dutch meditation and sleep subscription in four languages: a pipeline that takes every session from brief to release, mastering checks against the house loudness standard, a rights register that warns before licences run out, and growth experiments that cannot start without an ethics review.
The rules involved
The rules this kind of software usually has to follow. Guidance, not legal advice.
- 01
Health data protection
Mental health data is special category data under the GDPR and protected health information under HIPAA when a covered entity is involved.
- 02
Medical device rules
Apps that claim to treat or diagnose a condition can be medical devices under the EU MDR. Wellness apps must keep their claims on the wellness side.
- 03
Clinical safety standards
National standards, such as the NHS clinical risk standards in England, require a safety case for health IT.
- 04
Reimbursement schemes
Digital therapeutics schemes, such as Germany's DiGA, add their own evidence, security and privacy requirements.
- 05
Consumer protection
Subscription, dark pattern and consumer rights rules apply to wellness apps sold to the public.
Framework guides
Rules our mental health and wellness builds cite most
- GDPR2
- ACM dark-pattern guidance1
- APPI1
- BDSG1
- BSI TR-031611
- Caldicott Principles1
- Care Act 20141
- Código Deontológico del Psicólogo1
- Consumer Rights Directive1
Two ways to work with OceanLab
Project build
We design and build the system as one project. It starts with a clickable prototype your team tries before any production code is written. Pay per milestone (outcome-based) or hourly at $30-50/hr, depending on role and seniority.
Embedded engineers
Our engineers join your team on a flexible monthly retainer. Part-time is fine and it runs month to month, with hours that overlap the US, UK and Europe, the Middle East, and Australia and Asia. Outcome-based or $30-50/hr.
Guides and tools
Mental health and wellness software questions
How do you handle crisis situations in an app?
We agree crisis rules with your clinical lead, detect the signals they define, and route them to a person or an emergency path straight away. Every step is logged and tested like any other safety feature.
Is a meditation app a medical device?
Usually not, as long as it makes wellness claims and not claims to treat or diagnose a condition. We review claims and features against the device line as part of the design.
Can AI be used safely in mental health products?
With limits. We keep AI to tasks a clinician reviews, such as summarising or suggesting, add guardrails on what it may say, and never let it be the only response to risk.
