WGPlus (Archive)
Technology can help, but are we quite sure when & how best to use it |
Blog posted by: Dr Pauline Whelan, Co-Director, CAMHS.Digital, 3 July 2019. Can people develop feelings towards a robot therapist that are equivalent to those developed towards a human therapist? Should we worry more about sharing our mental health data compared with our physical health data? Will digital technologies replace human clinicians? Should we embed Artificial Intelligence (AI) in clinical decision-making tools or would AI make bad, biased decisions about our healthcare? Is the importance of human contact lost from clinical encounters when new digital technologies are introduced (and does it matter if it is)? Such questions are often lumped together in a general panic about introducing digital innovation in healthcare. These and other questions are explored in Reform’s recent report on data-driven mental healthcare. The report talks us through the importance of using data to improve healthcare and helps us understand how #datasaveslives. It also shows that successful transformation relies on building trust with patients & practitioners. This can only be achieved through rigorous research and a team science approach. We need to work with people to explore the risks, benefits & challenges of digital health technologies and data sharing. What are the conditions that satisfy a social license for data sharing so that people feel safe to share their data for healthcare purposes? The Connected Health Cities programme ran Citizens’ Juries to explore how healthcare data could be used in a way that people found acceptable. Building trust & transparency around sharing health data is key. We need to use novel ways to explore with people how digital technologies can be usefully embedded in healthcare contexts. A large scale hospital simulation game, like enTRUSTed can be used to explore how digital tools and data analytics can be integrated into complex systems. This allows to brainstorm the digital possibilities across many areas, from process optimisation to patient-facing applications. One of the best ways to embed digital technologies into routine care is to do so in ongoing cycles of continuous improvement. This involves creating a ‘learning health system’ that can adapt as it is embedded into different healthcare contexts. This parallels the ‘agile’ approach adopted in software development, where the software develops through ongoing collaboration and iteration. |
Researched Links: |
Reform: Learning Health Systems - an Agile Team Science Approach Reform: Making The Right Choices: Using Data-driven Technology to transform Mental Healthcare Reform: Creating a Learning Mental Health System Using Data-driven Technology Right Care, at The Right Time - How data-driven tech can help bridge the access gap for MH Services DHSC: Physical activity helps children to deal with life’s challenges ScotGov: Improvements to psychosis services LGA: Councils seeing more than 560 child mental health cases every day Never ‘blindly’ rely on something you don’t understand Remember it’s YOUR personal data Not long before a new ‘batch’ set off to Uni. Not having perfect teeth or a toned body is normal! An often overlooked medical condition Another area where Local Government needs more funding! Does this help explain why they are too busy to ‘solve’ minor crimes? You have to be mentally well to ‘feel’ well |