Cambridge Centre for Neuropsychiatric Research, Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Psyomics Ltd, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
J Med Internet Res. 2021 Oct 13;23(10):e27507. doi: 10.2196/27507.
Digital mental health technologies such as mobile health (mHealth) tools can offer innovative ways to help develop and facilitate mental health care provision, with the COVID-19 pandemic acting as a pivot point for digital health implementation. This viewpoint offers an overview of the opportunities and challenges mHealth innovators must navigate to create an integrated digital ecosystem for mental health care moving forward. Opportunities exist for innovators to develop tools that can collect a vast range of active and passive patient and transdiagnostic symptom data. Moving away from a symptom-count approach to a transdiagnostic view of psychopathology has the potential to facilitate early and accurate diagnosis, and can further enable personalized treatment strategies. However, the uptake of these technologies critically depends on the perceived relevance and engagement of end users. To this end, behavior theories and codesigning approaches offer opportunities to identify behavioral drivers and address barriers to uptake, while ensuring that products meet users' needs and preferences. The agenda for innovators should also include building strong evidence-based cases for digital mental health, moving away from a one-size-fits-all well-being approach to embrace the development of comprehensive digital diagnostics and validated digital tools. In particular, innovators have the opportunity to make their clinical evaluations more insightful by assessing effectiveness and feasibility in the intended context of use. Finally, innovators should adhere to standardized evaluation frameworks introduced by regulators and health care providers, as this can facilitate transparency and guide health care professionals toward clinically safe and effective technologies. By laying these foundations, digital services can become integrated into clinical practice, thus facilitating deeper technology-enabled changes.
数字心理健康技术，如移动健康 (mHealth) 工具，可以提供创新的方式来帮助开发和促进心理健康护理，而 COVID-19 大流行则成为数字健康实施的转折点。本观点概述了 mHealth 创新者在创建一个综合的数字心理健康护理生态系统时必须应对的机会和挑战。创新者有机会开发可以收集大量活跃和被动患者以及跨诊断症状数据的工具。从症状计数方法转变为跨诊断精神病理学观点有可能促进早期和准确的诊断，并进一步实现个性化的治疗策略。然而，这些技术的采用在很大程度上取决于最终用户对其相关性和参与度的看法。为此，行为理论和共同设计方法提供了机会来确定行为驱动因素，并解决采用的障碍，同时确保产品满足用户的需求和偏好。创新者的议程还应包括为数字心理健康建立强有力的循证案例，从一刀切的整体健康方法转变为接受全面的数字诊断和经过验证的数字工具的发展。特别是，创新者有机会通过评估预期使用环境中的有效性和可行性，使他们的临床评估更具洞察力。最后，创新者应遵守监管机构和医疗保健提供者引入的标准化评估框架，因为这可以提高透明度，并指导医疗保健专业人员使用临床安全有效的技术。通过奠定这些基础，数字服务可以融入临床实践，从而促进更深层次的技术驱动的变革。
