Dhima Alex, Choudhary Soumya, Myrick Keris, Torous John
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences, Bangalore, India.
Digit Health. 2025 Jun 2;11:20552076251327044. doi: 10.1177/20552076251327044. eCollection 2025 Jan-Dec.
The integration of technology in mental health care has proliferated to address accessibility and symptom monitoring through smartphones and apps. While the analysis of internet search data has proved fruitful in predicting various outcomes like youth suicidality and psychosis relapse, there has been scant research assessing opinions of patients and clinicians on adopting it in outpatient care, and no work on assessing the perceived utility of visualized data. We sought to address this gap by evaluating (1) the comfort, feasibility, and utility of sharing internet search data, and (2) various data visualizations from a novel pipeline to inform how patients and clinicians might start its potential integration immediately.
Patients ( = 21) and clinicians ( = 9) were interviewed on their opinions about integrating internet search data in therapy. Thematic analysis was used to derive common themes from interviews.
We revealed three common themes: varying comfort with internet search data in therapy, benefits of internet search data in therapy, and risks of internet search data in therapy. Patients and clinicians were generally comfortable integrating internet search data into therapy, but expressed reservations regarding data privacy and security, liability and complete patient autonomy. More granular search data in visualizations was considered more useful when compared to vague search frequencies.
Our results reveal a spectrum of comfort and utility surrounding integrating internet search data in therapy. We introduce a simple data processing pipeline for dynamic visualizations of search data at a variety of comfort levels, laying the immediate groundwork for its personalized implementation in outpatient care.
心理健康护理中技术的整合已广泛开展，通过智能手机和应用程序来解决可及性和症状监测问题。虽然互联网搜索数据分析在预测诸如青少年自杀倾向和精神病复发等各种结果方面已被证明卓有成效，但在门诊护理中评估患者和临床医生对采用该方法的看法的研究却很少，且没有关于评估可视化数据感知效用的工作。我们试图通过评估（1）共享互联网搜索数据的舒适度、可行性和效用，以及（2）来自一个新颖流程的各种数据可视化，来填补这一空白，以了解患者和临床医生如何能够立即开始其潜在的整合。
对21名患者和9名临床医生就他们对在治疗中整合互联网搜索数据的看法进行了访谈。采用主题分析法从访谈中得出共同主题。
我们揭示了三个共同主题：对治疗中互联网搜索数据的不同舒适度、治疗中互联网搜索数据的益处以及治疗中互联网搜索数据的风险。患者和临床医生总体上对将互联网搜索数据整合到治疗中感到满意，但对数据隐私和安全、责任以及患者的完全自主权表示保留意见。与模糊的搜索频率相比，可视化中更详细的搜索数据被认为更有用。
我们的结果揭示了围绕在治疗中整合互联网搜索数据的一系列舒适度和效用。我们引入了一个简单的数据处理流程，用于在各种舒适度水平下对搜索数据进行动态可视化，为其在门诊护理中的个性化实施奠定了直接基础。
