Start-Up Challenge: PsyOs.AI aims to make Wyoming-based tech company for mental health providers

CASPER, Wyo. –– Computing technology has been used in the medical field for ages. However, one area where computers have lagged has been mental health. Traditional computing has thrived in record-keeping and accuracy, but translating data into human feelings has been the biggest challenge, according to Dr. David Martorano.

“If you think about monitoring somebody’s pulse, that’s objective,” said Martorano, “but there’s a lot of subjective stuff to behavioral health, and analyzing that is a much higher-level intellectual process.”

“I’m not saying psychiatrists are smarter, I’m just saying that it’s a different process,” he said.

Dr. Martorano is a psychiatrist and Chief Medical Officer at the Wyoming Behavioral Institute. His startup PsyOs.AI — which he created with his wife, Anne — aims to create a system that helps AI translate large medical databases and communicate that back in language that is much more suited to humans, specifically for mental health.

“We’re able to transform well back and forth between database language and human language, so that doctors are seeing what’s important to them at the moment they’re treating patients, and computers are correctly storing and processing the language,” he said. “We’ve never really had that before.”

Current technology uses what Martorano calls “ambient scribing,” which is basically retrospective. “It didn’t help you make a better decision about how to help that person at that intersection; it wasn’t there at the moment,” he said.

“We want the AI to do a lot of the decoding and re-coding, but we don’t want to take people out of the process,” he continued. “We give them a much more dashboard type of experience during the interview, where they’re able to focus on the patient instead of wasting time on documentation.”

“I wanted this to be a Wyoming-grown project,” he said, aiming to build a completely Wyoming-based tech company using technology to improve mental healthcare. That’s one reason he applied for the 2025 Casper Star-Up Challenge, where his idea was chosen as one of five finalists.

All five finalists will give their final pitch on Pitch Night on Thursday, Oct. 30. Three winners will be chosen.

The process has also helped make more connections with potential investors.

“It’s nice to see so many entrepreneurs are coming out of Wyoming,” he said. “Because it’s a Wyoming-focused company, we hope to remain Wyoming-focused the whole time, but with a global reach.”

The Casper Start-Up Challenge Pitch Night is at Frontier Brewing Company on Thursday, Oct. 30. The public is welcome to watch the event.

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