Start the day off right with breakfast and informal networking. Enjoy coffee, conversation, and light fare while connecting with fellow attendees before the morning keynote.

Session Description: AI is showing up everywhere in behavioral health: vendor demos, internal pilots, board conversations. But most organizations don’t have a clear way to think about where AI actually fits, what it should and shouldn’t touch, and how to get one real win instead of another stalled rollout.

In this opening keynote, Isamu Pant, a former Amazon leader and the author of The Behavioral Health Fix, will give leaders a simple lens for every AI decision they make, and just enough “how” to start using it with their teams on Monday.

You’ll walk through three pieces of groundwork that need to be in place before any AI project has a real chance of working:

• Governance & guardrails – A simple way to define how AI can, and should, support your organization.

• Operational groundwork – How to quickly decide if a particular area of your org is ready for AI, or if you’d just be speeding up the mess you already have.

• Workforce & clinical trust – How to frame and design AI rollouts so staff experience less friction and “busywork,” and are more likely to buy in.

Rather than a technical “how to,” this session gives you a way to think, a few key questions to ask, and a structure you can reuse.

You will also get a one page AI Deployment Planner to use throughout the Summit so you leave with 2–3 realistic, organization specific AI pilots that fit this lens, instead of a stack of disconnected ideas.

Step into our interactive exhibit space for live demos of cutting-edge AI tools transforming behavioral health care. During these dedicated breaks, attendees can connect directly with solution providers, ask questions, and see real-time examples of how AI is enhancing operations, engagement, documentation, and outcomes.

Session Description: Jimmy Lyons, President of Behavioral Health at Further, draws on over 13 years of working in AI and a deeply personal moment navigating a crisis to challenge how we think about artificial intelligence. Rather than replacing humans, Jimmy argues that AI’s most powerful role is eliminating silence by absorbing chaos, preserving context, and ensuring that when someone raises their hand, the system responds. Through real-world examples, he reframes AI as connective infrastructure, not the decision maker, but the layer that removes waiting, bridges broken handoffs, and hands the moment back to humans when empathy and judgment actually matter. This session offers a new mental model for AI and a practical blueprint for building systems that show up when it counts.

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Session Description: The journey to treatment begins with families, friends, and people seeking help exploring available treatment options. AI offers multiple opportunities and challenges to educate these stakeholders. While online AI tools such as ChatGPT are introducing uncertainty related to SEO strategies and a no-click environment, treatment organizations can use AI to engage people seeking care through intelligent chatbots, AI-powered assessment tools, and AI-enhanced content. In this panel discussion, hear how treatment providers are maximizing these opportunities at the beginning of the treatment experience.

Panel Discussion Sponsored By:

Enjoy local flavors and relaxed conversation as you recharge for the afternoon. This is a perfect time to meet fellow attendees, share takeaways from the morning sessions, and make meaningful new connections across behavioral health and tech.

Session Description: The first hurdle is getting someone into care. But once the door opens, the clinical work begins, and documentation is often the first friction point. From ambient scribing to intelligent decision support, AI is reshaping how clinicians capture, share, and use information. In this session, speakers will explore how behavioral health teams are deploying AI to reduce paperwork, enhance care coordination, and improve the quality of clinical documentation, while preserving the integrity of the therapeutic relationship.

Panel Discussion Sponsored By:

Session Description: Behind every clinical experience is a financial system that supports it. As the care journey continues, behavioral health organizations must ensure services are sustainable, reimbursable, and efficiently delivered. In this session, panelists will explore how AI is improving visibility into revenue cycle operations, forecasting costs, reducing billing errors, optimizing claims, and uncovering new efficiencies. Hear how finance and clinical teams are working together to ensure that AI enhances, not complicates, financial sustainability.

Panel Discussion Sponsored By:

Step into our interactive exhibit space for live demos of cutting-edge AI tools transforming behavioral health care. During these dedicated breaks, attendees can connect directly with solution providers, ask questions, and see real-time examples of how AI is enhancing operations, engagement, documentation, and outcomes.

Session Description: As AI becomes embedded deeper into behavioral health operations, from documentation to patient matching to decision support, so does the responsibility to ensure these tools are safe, compliant, and ethically deployed. This session explores how organizations are managing new layers of data governance, risk mitigation, and regulatory alignment. Panelists will share real-world frameworks for securing AI systems, aligning with HIPAA and emerging guidance, and building trust with staff, patients, and regulators.

Panel Discussion Sponsored By:

Session Description: We wrap up the day with a focus on an organization's most essential asset, the people who care for people. AI is being used not to replace the behavioral health workforce, but to strengthen and support it. In this session, leaders will share how they are using AI to inform staffing models, reduce burnout, and support post-discharge engagement. From outcome tracking to task automation, this session will explore how AI can help clinicians and care teams do what they do best, focus on the people they serve.

Panel Discussion Sponsored By:

Wind down Day 1 with a relaxed evening of conversation, local flavor, and peer connection. Join us in the exhibit area for a casual networking reception featuring signature Nashville bites and beverages. This is the perfect opportunity to build relationships and exchange ideas with fellow leaders at the close of the day.

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Start your morning with coffee, conversation, and light fare as we ease into Day 2. This is a chance to reflect on what you took in from the first day, reconnect with colleagues, and set the tone for another full day of insights and innovation.

Session Description: Artificial intelligence is moving rapidly into behavioral health, from intake automation to therapy-adjacent chatbots, but innovation without empathy risks fracturing the very thing that makes therapy work. In this session, Kyle Hillman, author of Illinois’ and Nevada’s bans on unregulated AI therapy, explores how the profession can embrace technology without losing what makes it human: the connection between client and clinician. Attendees will gain a clear understanding of the emerging AI landscape, evolving regulations, and the practical steps behavioral health leaders can take to ensure that ethics, empathy, and clinical integrity remain at the center of care.

Session Description: AI in behavioral health is often discussed in extremes either as a futuristic replacement for clinicians or as a risky compliance liability. The reality is far more practical and far more powerful.

In this session, Gabe Szczepanek, Co-Founder and CTO of Ritten, will explore how AI is fundamentally changing what behavioral health software can do not by replacing clinicians, but by removing administrative toil, unlocking insight from narrative data, and transforming the EMR from a billing tool into a true clinical partner.

Behavioral health documentation is overwhelmingly narrative text session notes, treatment plans, utilization reviews, compliance documentation. AI models are uniquely suited to process and synthesize narrative information at scale. When thoughtfully integrated into a modern EMR, this creates immediate operational leverage.

Attendees will learn:

Why AI is particularly well suited to behavioral health workflows

How AI scribes reduce documentation burden while preserving clinical integrity

How AI can strengthen compliance by evaluating qualitative documentation standards

How natural-language data querying changes reporting and decision-making

Where AI should stop and why clinical decision-making must remain human

This session moves beyond hype to show how AI can responsibly augment care delivery, improve reimbursement accuracy, and help providers focus on what matters most: clients.

Sponsored By:

Step into our interactive exhibit space for live demos of cutting-edge AI tools transforming behavioral health care. During these dedicated breaks, attendees can connect directly with solution providers, ask questions, and see real-time examples of how AI is enhancing operations, engagement, documentation, and outcomes.

Session Description: Behavioral health risk is rarely captured in structured fields — it lives in the narrative. By extracting patient trajectories and semantic signals from clinical documentation, we can transform unstructured notes into predictive intelligence. This session explores how AI-driven tagging and longitudinal modeling reveal patterns of deterioration, improvement, and emerging risk that traditional reporting misses. The result is smarter risk stratification, earlier intervention, and more proactive care for the patients who need it most.

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Session Description: Join leaders from Community Medical Services, a nationwide provider headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, that offers walk-in, same-day access and holistic, peer-supported care for individuals with substance use disorders. This case-study presentation will explore how CMS is navigating the challenges of implementing AI across a multi-site organization—from aligning executive vision with frontline realities to building trust, providing training, and supporting staff during periods of technological change. Attendees will hear firsthand what it takes to roll out AI tools in behavioral health settings while maintaining clinical quality and staff engagement.

Session Description: The Redpoint Center will share its experience integrating AI into day-to-day clinical workflows within an outpatient setting that supports both mental health treatment and substance use recovery, while navigating organizational change fatigue and therapist concerns about technology adoption. This case study highlights the practical structure behind their rollout—including how they evaluated and implemented a vendor solution that integrates with their EMR, redesigned documentation and care-team workflows to fit coordinated outpatient operations, and built a training approach that supported clinicians across disciplines. Speakers will also address the cultural and leadership challenges of implementation in a highly relational care environment, particularly among teams that may be hesitant or less technologically inclined. Attendees will leave with an honest view of both the systems work and the leadership work required for successful AI adoption in outpatient behavioral health care.

Take a break and grab a bite before our final sessions. Whether you’re swapping takeaways from Day 1 or conversing about this morning’s panels, lunch offers a chance to reset and reconnect with colleagues before the Summit closes out.

Session Description: Headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, Centerstone is the nation’s largest behavioral health providers, serving communities across multiple states with a focus on innovation, access, and clinical excellence. In this fireside-style case study, leaders from Centerstone will reflect on their evolving journey toward AI integration, starting with the implementation of digital tools for clinical documentation. The session will explore how these tools are impacting staff workflows, where early gains have emerged, and how the organization is thinking system-wide about future applications. With insights grounded in real-world rollout and frontline feedback, this conversation will offer attendees a thoughtful look at how one behavioral health system is laying the groundwork for responsible, long-term innovation. Full session details coming soon.

Step into our interactive exhibit space for live demos of cutting-edge AI tools transforming behavioral health care. During these dedicated breaks, attendees can connect directly with solution providers, ask questions, and see real-time examples of how AI is enhancing operations, engagement, documentation, and outcomes.

Session Description: As we close this summit, the question isn't whether AI will transform behavioral health—it's how you'll lead that transformation starting Monday morning. This closing keynote synthesizes the insights, innovations, and real-world strategies you've encountered over the past two days into a clear roadmap for executive action. You'll leave with concrete next steps to position your organization at the forefront of AI-enabled care while staying grounded in the human relationships that define behavioral health excellence.