Monitoring patient progress

What technology resources for clinicians are available to monitor how patients are progressing throughout psychotherapy? How can clinicians best integrate these tools into their practice, and what are the pros and cons?

There are so many great options available to clinicians right now. There’s been a recent proliferation of digital health tools, platforms, and companies focused on therapist “enablement” in and between sessions and all these tools are aimed at making clinical care and administrative work easier. Some of these tools focus on initial measurement, tracking patient progress, and working on patient engagement between sessions. In fact, using these types of measurement-based care platforms is becoming the standard within digital health companies providing direct care.

The benefits include a streamlined intake and monitoring process, automated scoring of questionnaires and measures, having patient information all in one platform, a simpler way to assign homework, and providing a way for patients to make progress between sessions. But it is important to choose the right tool for what you need. I’ve seen organizations buy tools for their clinicians to use and have minimal adoption because the tool just isn’t serving their care process. You’ll have more success with uptake if you assess what functionality would complement your practice, to help avoid choosing a tool that ends up creating more work.

One thing to be cautious about is the data privacy practices for these tech companies. Ensuring that tools are HIPAA compliant is a crucial first step, and it is also important to find out what the companies do and don’t do with your clinical data. Some of these companies have found themselves in hot water for using patient data for undisclosed algorithm training purposes. With the AI boom, we want to ensure that patient data continues to remain private. When shopping around, ask explicit questions about patient data and know how you are going to talk about data privacy with your patients.