Digital technologies in mental health – opportunities, challenges and unexpected benefits
In a few weeks time I am speaking at the 2nd Summit New Technologies and Mental Health: Future Possibilities in Barcelona. In my presentation I will share opportunities, challenges and unexpected benefits arising from the first year and a half of our mHabitat programme – supporting digital innovation in the sphere of mental health and beyond. People first – technology second The first insight I will share is a simple one – the fundamental importance of putting people first and technology second. It seems obvious that people should be at the heart of any innovation in mental health, but we have learnt that it is often missed. It is too easy for the allure of new technology to outshine more mundane but crucial considerations of understanding what people actually want and need. Why is it so important to put people first? Creating or licensing a digital technology will only add real value if we deeply understand the preferences, motivations and capabilities of the people they are intended for. Fortunately there are established methodologies, such as user centred design and service design for co-designing digital technologies that add value to a user’s journey through a service. In the health service there is the added dimension that digital technologies need to be underpinned by sound theories of behaviour change and/or clinical guidance as well as meeting regulatory requirements. Generating evidence so we know what works and what doesn’t is also an important consideration. Putting people at the centre is the first step to developing digital technologies that will really make a difference to people’s lives. Putting people first means recognising that...
Digital is just a fad.
‘Digital is just a fad’ ‘Digital is just a distraction from the real problems facing healthcare’ ‘Digital is just another thing to learn and I don’t have time’ These are all challenges I’ve recently heard from healthcare professionals recently who are reticent and doubtful about the value of spending time developing their understanding of social media and digital tools/services. Everyone is busy and everyone is overstretched. So why should their attention be focused here when they are so many other more pressing priorities? Their wariness is in sharp contrast to a talk on widening digital participation by Bob Gann at a recent mHealthHabitat breakfast discussion in which he shared the following three stark facts: Low health literacy is closely linked to poor outcomes and mortality Information and services are increasingly digital – digital skills are increasingly linked to health literacy Those who are least likely to be online are those who most need health and care services. If digital skills are important for people needing health and care services then they are also important for practitioners who are delivering those services. Increasingly, practitioners need to incorporate digital mediation in to their day to day work – helping people find and make sense of the best health information and digital tools online. Digital skills aren’t just technical skills – they are skills in appraising information online, they are skills in participating in online communities to maximise their beneficial effects and minimise harm; they are skills in understanding whether a mobile app is based on evidenced clinical effectiveness and deciding if you’re ok with how it uses your data; they are...
Do you search for your patients online? And is it the right thing to do?
Have you ever searched for your patients online? And is it the right thing to do? Guidelines about use of social media in health tend to relate to the public and shareable aspects of online networks, with associated issues of identity and professionalism. But what about hidden practices online, such as seeking out information about a patient? Is this an acceptable practice? And is it a common one? How would you feel if you found out your clinical practitioner had been checking out your web presence and social media profiles? In this New York Times article Warraich suggests that searching for patients is commonplace amongst doctors. This sort of surprises me, given how much pressure busy clinicians are under, but I also can imagine that it does happen. Earlier this year I spoke at a UK Clinical Ethics Network conference on the topic of social media and ethics. I gave an example of an inpatient whose mobile phone was confiscated, apparently as a result of clinicians finding out they had a blog. I asked the question ‘is this ethical practice?’ and it excited a lot of conversation – views ranged from believing that anything in the public domain is fair game through to those believing that searching out patients online is highly unprincipled. My thoughts have come back to this topic whilst reading the fascinating It’s Complicated: the social lives of networked teens (Boyd, D. 2014) in which the author considers issues of privacy in relation to teens and social networks. Whilst on the surface a very different topic, I noticed similarities with a healthcare context – as with...about.me
Victoria Betton
victoria betton
director mHabitat | NHS | social media & mental health doctorate | interested in digital inclusion | parma violets fiend | http://codesigndigitalhealth.co.uk
