President and CEO of Lucid Lane. Software technology expert and digital health advocate.
Getty
The Covid-19 pandemic has forced great change in the practice of health care. Telehealth usage has soared from 11% of Americans using it in 2019 to 76% of Americans now interested in using it moving forward. On the caregiver side, 57% of providers report more favorable views on telehealth than before this pandemic. Even government insurance policies are now providing coverage for telehealth services in the same way they do traditional office visits.
In mental health care, continuity is crucial to success, so providers have swiftly adapted no-contact models of care. During a pandemic, this seems like a no-brainer. But what if telehealth is not just a temporary replacement for in-person therapy? What if teletherapy is actually superior to the status quo?
As CEO of a mental teletherapy platform specializing in benzos and opioids medication tapering, I know how life-changing digital health resources can be for patients. Most people know that teletherapy broadens patient access to care. In a word, it's convenient. Whether you live in a rural area far from doctors or need specialized care not available in your locality, teletherapy helps bridge those gaps. The Covid-19 crisis has forced relaxation of state-to-state licensing restrictions, broadening convenient access further.
These patients need help in real time, especially when they are feeling isolated, stressed or depressed. Sometimes, you cannot wait to make an appointment and see someone a week later. Teletherapy enables that timely support. Teletherapy enables providers to use a full range of treatment modalities — one-to-one therapy sessions, but also CBT exercises, mindfulness techniques, peer support, mobile text support, timely reminders, all mediated by technology.
Digital health and AI can enable technology to measure each patient's health signals to build a quantitative profile that tells providers at any given time how a person is doing directionally. Digital health companies like Vtuls and Mindstrong gather signals of physical and emotional health automatically and use digital and predictive AI means to flag important changes in an individual's health.
Teletherapy does bring unique challenges. Patients need reliable Wi-Fi access and digital literacy skills to make teletherapy work. Therapists need to know in advance when someone needs help so they can intervene before their condition reaches an acute level. Teletherapists must "reach through the screen" and read nonverbal cues more actively. It's important to recognize that serious mental illness might not be treatable by teletherapy.
That said, therapy mediated through devices need not be less substantial than in-person communications. In fact, teletherapy can offer more flexibility for different communication styles. Some patients thrive on face-to-face and might prefer videoconferencing. Others might be more comfortable with phone calls. Still, others might open up more readily via texting than they would by speaking verbally. These preferences vary between individuals but also between generations.
Teletherapy can also serve as a digitized data collection hub, with the potential to radically improve patient outcomes. Leveraging online dynamic surveys allows daily interaction with patients. They can choose how many questions to answer at a given time, and those questions can be dynamically generated to probe more deeply into problem areas. Aided by technology, therapists get more timely snapshots of patients' symptoms so they can adjust care regimens appropriately. AI and machine learning can help aid treatment regimens and provide therapists with richer, more real-time health signal data — yet AI has rarely been applied to improving mental healthcare before. Luckily that's changing fast.
Teletherapy opens wide other possibilities, too. Because it's often built around technology such as smartphones, it can incorporate the full range of mobile apps for mental health into a customized care plan.
Ellipsis Health analyzes a patient's natural speech patterns for signs of heightened anxiety and depression, triggering immediate response from a human therapist. Woebot is one of several intelligent bots coaching patients through CBT techniques to improve patient mood and gather crucial data between therapy appointments.
Apple, Johnson & Johnson and Best Buy just announced a major clinical study to use smartwatches to detect atrial defibrillation in seniors. In the future this could lead to smartwatches detecting a patient's rising heart rate may alert a therapist when a patient is experiencing a panic attack.
Professional services firm PwC is piloting a volunteer study combining machine learning with wearable devices to help employees manage pandemic-related stressors like sleep disruption. Mental health therapists could follow suit and use sleep disruption data in a similar way.
As this data is collected, it could be visualized through charts for patients and caregivers to see their progress toward the goal. It could help identify which modalities and treatments serve the patient best, and track which behaviors support or hinder their progress, like regular exercise and sleep. Even data collected from nutritional apps could help inform holistic care.
We all know individuals need different things from mental health care. The data that can be collected through mobile devices has the potential to influence and inform individualized care plans to help people reach their goals.
As states reopen and life returns to a new normal, why steer away from these tremendous opportunities in favor of the way it's always been done before? Telehealth provides an opportunity to take a step forward in the way we care for ourselves and each other with an emphasis on individualized care and real-time response.
Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
