GIMBHI's Q&A with Maja Gselman, Founder of Tina Assistant

Maja Gselman is the founder and CEO of Centrum Cognitio, the Slovenian company behind TINA Assistant. After more than ten years working as a psychologist and therapist, she built TINA to fix a problem she lived with daily: the hours clinicians lose to note-taking, transcription, and documentation that pull them away from the people in front of them. TINA records and summarizes sessions, keeps client records organized and secure, and tracks progress over time, giving practitioners back the time and focus their work depends on. Based in Maribor, Maja has grown Centrum Cognitio into one of Slovenia's few mental health AI startups, with a place in European deep-tech programs such as EmpoWomen and Women TechEU. Her work brings together clinical psychology and technology designed to support the people who provide care, not replace them.

1. You worked as a psychologist and therapist for more than ten years before starting a company. What led you to build TINA?

After more than ten years of working as a psychologist and psychotherapist, I experienced firsthand the growing gap between the demand for mental health services and the capacity of professionals to provide them. This became especially evident after the COVID-19 pandemic, when more people were seeking support while clinicians faced heavier workloads and administrative demands.

I started looking for tools that could ease this burden and allow therapists to spend more time focusing on clients. I realized that most existing solutions were built primarily for documentation and administration, not for supporting clinical reflection and therapeutic decision-making. That insight led us to create TINA. What started as a practical tool for therapists has evolved into a broader vision: using AI responsibly to support mental health professionals while keeping human expertise and therapeutic relationships at the center of care.

2. For someone hearing about it for the first time, what does TINA actually do for a therapist?

TINA is an AI-powered platform designed to support psychotherapists and other mental health professionals throughout their clinical work. Today, it helps therapists manage documentation, organize clinical information, and streamline administrative tasks, and it is already being used by psychologists and psychotherapists in Slovenia.

We are now developing an advanced recommendation system that combines speech, language, and contextual information to generate structured and explainable insights. The goal is to help therapists identify important communication patterns and clinically relevant signals that may deserve further attention.

Importantly, TINA does not diagnose patients or replace professional judgment. We see it as a second pair of eyes that supports observation, reflection, and learning while leaving all clinical decisions in the hands of the therapist.

3. You named the platform after the idea of a “Therapist’s Intelligent Assistant.” How do you see TINA fitting into a therapist’s everyday workflow?

We designed TINA to fit naturally into the therapist’s existing workflow rather than creating additional work. Mental health professionals already spend significant time documenting sessions, reviewing treatment progress, preparing interventions, and reflecting on complex clinical situations. TINA supports these activities by providing structure, insights, and recommendations that can enhance reflection.

In the future, its recommendation system will surface verbal and non-verbal cues that might otherwise go unnoticed and highlight areas worth closer attention in upcoming sessions. This can be especially valuable for professionals who are still developing their clinical competencies.

Our vision is to augment expertise, not replace it. TINA is designed to become a trusted assistant that frees therapists to focus more on the people in front of them.

4. How would you describe the state of mental health care and access to therapy in Slovenia, and did that shape how you built TINA?

Like many countries, Slovenia faces growing demand for mental health services, a shortage of mental health professionals, and long waiting times for care. In some cases, people wait many months for access to specialized psychological support, while clinicians work under mounting pressure on already limited resources. These challenges are not unique to Slovenia. Similar trends can be seen across Europe and globally, which is why we designed TINA as a solution with international relevance from the beginning.

Our goal is to help therapists work more efficiently and make better-informed decisions while preserving the human relationship at the heart of psychotherapy. A key difference in our approach is that we combine scientific evidence, expert clinical knowledge, and lived experience. I believe that people with lived experience of mental health conditions bring valuable insights that complement research and clinical expertise, helping us build AI that is patient-centered, ethical, transparent, and trustworthy.