TMS · Dropout prevention
Keep TMS patients in treatment through the acute course.
About 1 in 4 TMS patients never completes the acute course, and an incomplete course undercuts the outcome you and the patient were working toward. Most dropout is preceded by quiet disengagement that is invisible between sessions until the cancellations start.
The acute-course completion gap
An acute TMS course is dozens of daily sessions over several weeks, a heavy schedule for someone with depression-driven low motivation. Early ambivalence, side-effect frustration, or a dip in mood often shows up in behavior days before it shows up as a no-show. Without a between-visit signal, the clinic only learns about it after the patient has already started slipping.
24%
of TMS patients never finish the acute course
Sackeim 2020
30–40%
PHQ-9-by-email completion, so most patients are unmonitored between visits
$12k+
average annual revenue per active interventional patient at risk per dropout
How Emobot reduces TMS dropout
See disengagement early
Drops in activity, expressivity, and digital behavior surface waning engagement before the cancellations begin.
Zero added burden
Patients install once in 3 minutes; there is nothing to remember and nothing to fill out, so monitoring itself never becomes a reason to disengage.
Targeted outreach
Your team focuses re-engagement effort on the specific patients whose signal is trending the wrong way, instead of guessing.
Patient-side prompts
The patient receives supportive nudges inside their own app, reinforcing the value of finishing the course.
The evidence
- Continuous wellness score validated against MADRS at r=0.89.
- 75% patient activation when the physician recommends it.
- Battery impact of about 5% on desktop and 7 to 10% on mobile, less than most navigation apps.
Frequently asked questions
How many TMS patients drop out before finishing?
Naturalistic data indicates roughly 24% never complete the acute course (Sackeim 2020). Completion is strongly tied to outcome, so reducing early dropout is one of the highest-yield levers a TMS program has.
Can monitoring really prevent dropout?
Monitoring does not prevent dropout on its own, but it makes early disengagement visible while there is still time to act. Clinics use the trend to prioritize outreach to the specific patients who are quietly slipping.
Will another app annoy patients and make dropout worse?
Emobot is passive after a 3-minute setup, with no surveys or daily tasks, so it does not add to patient burden. That is why activation reaches 75% when a doctor recommends it.
Go deeper in the full guide: TMS Patient Monitoring: The Complete Guide
See it on a real patient case.
A 30-minute demo walks through the dashboard and how TMS patients show up in the data between visits.