Integrated Digital Platforms for Clinical Care

Digital platforms can improve patient care, including continuity of care across service providers, and improve outcomes. Electronic health records are widely used within clinical services to document clinical care, and specific applications in mental health care include prompts to develop a suicide safety plan, referrals from general practice for specialist consultations, and standardized risk assessment templates. Digital platforms can also enable communication and engagement with service users across their care. Existing technologies such as text messaging have improved outcomes, with new opportunities emerging from novel platforms such as conversational agents. Beyond the use of these platforms for enhancing communication, advances in smartphone sensors are opening the possibility of digital phenotyping as a method of deriving objective measures of behavior. Such techniques can be used for the early detection of behavior changes, but also for measuring treatment response and the identification of novel cohorts with similar behaviors. Regardless of the mode or functionality of a digital platform, consideration of the human factors and user experience are critical to ensure safety and usage uptake. This can be supported by applying existing quality frameworks and end-user and stakeholder engagement, including co-design processes.