Improving Psychiatric Care Through Integrated Digital Technologies

This manuscript provides an overview of our efforts to implement an integrated electronic monitoring and feedback platform to increase patient engagement, improve care delivery and outcome of treatment, and alert care teams to deterioration in functioning. Patients First utilizes CareSense, a digital care navigation and data collection system, to integrate traditional patient-reported outcomes monitoring with novel biological monitoring between visits to provide patients and caregivers with real-time feedback on changes in symptoms such as stress, anxiety, and depression. The next stage of project development incorporates digital therapeutics (computerized therapeutic interventions) for patients, and video resources for primary care physicians and nurse practitioners who serve as the de facto front line for psychiatric care. Integration of the patient-reported outcomes monitoring with continuous biological monitoring, and digital supports is a novel application of existing technologies. Video resources pushed to care providers whose patients trigger a symptom severity alert is, to our knowledge, an industry first.