The Fundamentals of Digital Psychiatry for Telehealth Providers

In the dynamic landscape of digital mental health, a myriad of technologies is reshaping the way clinicians approach well-being and expanding the tools that telehealth psychiatrists can offer their patients.

In this video, Steven R. Chan, MD, MBA, clinical assistant professor affiliated, Stanford University School of Medicine, provides an overview of the rapidly expanding world of digital mental health. As the field burgeons, challenges loom—regulations addressing data privacy, security, and the imperative need for validation and research to ensure these technologies seamlessly complement, rather than replace, traditional diagnostic and treatment approaches.

For more expert insights on virtual practice, visit our Telehealth Excellence Forum.

Read the Transcript

Steven Chan, MD, MBA: I'm Steven Chan. I'm a member of the Steering Committee for Psych Congress, and I am also clinical assistant professor affiliated at Stanford University School of Medicine. (0:44)

Psych Congress Network: Which technologies for psychiatry are on the rise and what are the potential and key issues of these technologies?

Dr Chan: So digital mental health is an exciting time. We're seeing a lot of different technologies that are being placed into apps and platforms in things like smartphone apps, smart watches, mobile VR headsets, and a lot of exciting things are happening. So some of the technologies that we're looking at are things like passive and active data. Passive data are things that you passively sense from keystrokes, GPS location, even the light, amount of light from the ambient surroundings. Active data are things that the user, or in this case the patient, is actively entering into their phone. We're also seeing things like social media being used, whether they're internal or external. So sometimes we see internal social media-like communication in apps where you can communicate with a peer specialist or peer support or a coach.

We can also see things like virtual reality. After decades and decades of research, we're seeing these become more affordable, more portable, and used for things like exposure therapy, exposing people to fears, anxieties, triggers, so that they can expose themselves to small amounts to learn how to tolerate that anxiety and stress. And then we're also seeing things like chatbots. Chatbots were very essential during the COVID-19 emergency for coronavirus symptom checking and things like that. And we're also seeing this great interest in stochastic machine learning, large language model-driven chatbots like ChatGPT, Bard, and certainly Bing, which is also powered by OpenAI's technology.

And so, one of the biggest challenges then is what kind of regulations are we going to see around these technologies? Data privacy, making sure that there's enough security, and making sure that our valuable health data for a lot of our conditions doesn't fall into the hands of the wrong people. And then we're also seeing things like validation and research being important things to consider for a lot of these technologies. Finally, making sure that we have these to not necessarily replace a lot of what we do, but augment and help us out when we are doing diagnosis or treatment plans. So those are some of the things that we can highlight with technologies on the horizon.

Steven Chan (@StevenChanMD, www.stevenchanMD.com) is an actively-practicing physician at Palo Alto VA Health, specializing in psychiatry, clinical informatics, and healthcare technology. Dr Chan performs clinical research in areas of telehealth and digital mental health, with applications in underserved and minority health. Dr. Chan is a sought-after national speaker whose ideas, thoughts, and research have been featured by Talks At Google, JAMA, Telemedicine and e-Health, Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR), Wired, PBS, and NPR Ideastream.