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Category: News
03/06/2023

Opioid Prescription Decision Tool May Be Feasible Option to Curb Overprescribing

Article Excerpt: A new report shows that an app designed to help clinicians make better opioid-prescribing decisions following surgery can be a useful tool, although not all clinicians said they would continue using it. The study, published in BMJ Open, highlights one potential strategy to help curb the overprescription of opioids, which is believed to be a major factor in the current epidemic of opioid addiction in the United States. The study investigators said persistent postsurgical opioid use is a common problem that occurs in about 6% of opioid-naive patients who are given the drugs. In about 15% of cases, patients are discharged with opioid prescriptions that are inconsistent with their opioid usage while in the hospital.

Full Article: https://tinyurl.com/yhxbwnc2

Article Source: AJMC

02/28/2023

MHT Delivers New Technology for Measuring and Improving Mental Wellness

Article Excerpt: Mental Health Technologies (MHT) offers a rapidly growing cloud-based platform primary care physicians and mental health professionals use to screen and test for mental health disorders, including depression and substance abuse. MHT helps providers identify areas where their patients are struggling and refers them to the proper behavioral healthcare professional…SmarTest is a tool that uses intelligence and historical data to define when-and how-a patient should be tested for various mental health conditions. It can base its decisions on patient information, such as age, gender, or other demographics.

Full Article: https://tinyurl.com/6ruxh22t

Article Source: Accesswire

02/21/2023

Women’s Telehealth Program Diminishes Stigma via Technology

Article Excerpt: The Medical University of South Carolina Medical Center in Charleston has a unique telemedicine program in place to help pregnant and postpartum women. The program is called Listening to Women and Pregnant and Postpartum People, or LTWP. The technology vendors are REDCap and Twillio. It’s a mid-maturity program that is responding to behavioral health needs of pregnant women, and has recently expanded to newborn virtual home visitation for all mothers with births in the hospital.

Full Article: https://tinyurl.com/4hpmzjta

Article Source: Healthcare IT News

02/15/2023

ChatGPT Gets Dartmouth Talking

Article Excerpt: ChatGPT, OpenAI’s trending chatbot that generates conversational responses to user prompts through advanced artificial intelligence, has been busy since its launch in late November… “ChatGPT and other generative AI technologies have huge potential for—and will have huge effects on—education,” says Provost David Kotz ’86, the Pat and John Rosenwald Professor in the Department of Computer Science. “My hope is to provide immediate support to faculty and instructors to become familiar with the technology and its impacts, and then look further down the road to consider how we can leverage it as a pedagogical tool, recognizing that it will be part of the future of teaching, learning, scholarship, and work.”

Full Article: https://tinyurl.com/59hbkfzm

Article Source: Dartmouth News

02/13/2023

Telehealth Is Here to Stay: How Technology Has Become a Staple for Physicians and Is Serving Unmet Health Care Needs

Article Excerpt: While the pandemic was the impetus for greater utilization of telehealth across the health care continuum, it’s safe to say that due to the convenience and benefits it offers to patients and providers, telehealth is here to stay. Before COVID-19, telehealth visits only accounted for 4% of total appointments, according to our recent research, which evaluated telehealth usage across 93.7 million patients in our athenaOne network. In the first half of 2022 when many patients returned to receiving in-person care, virtual visits still accounted for 8.9% of total appointments – a relatively minor decrease from the 12.1% we saw at the pandemic’s height. In addition to large-scale utilization, it is also evident that telehealth is being leveraged for a wide range of use cases. The network research, in addition to a survey we commissioned through Dynata of 2,000 U.S. patients, both found interesting patterns in usage for behavioral health, chronic care, as well as differences in adoption across race and gender. Despite differences in adoption and utilization, one thing is clear: Telehealth will remain a pivotal component of health care delivery now and in the years to come.

Full Article: https://tinyurl.com/yhm65kvr

Article Source: Medical Economics

02/10/2023

CBT Smartphone App Aims to Address Depression in Teens

Article Excerpt: Researchers recently created a brand new CBT smartphone app that will provide young people with multiple ways to address and handle their mental health problems. A study group will now be assembled to assess the effectiveness of the smartphone application in relation to its ability to combat depression. Adolescents are struggling with depression at higher rates today than ever before. Researchers believe that the stress of the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting peer isolation and disruption to school life is to blame. Other factors cited include an ever-growing presence on social media and pressure to conform to impossible celebrity standards. Thus, any way in which technology can help depressed teens minimize symptoms is much-needed. Through the use of interactive and self-guided therapy, the ClearlyMe app will use the power of cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, on teenagers from all over the country. The technology contains 37 “short lessons” that will touch upon the basics of CBT and the power it has to change thinking and alter core beliefs in those who use it.

Full Article: https://tinyurl.com/326u5s8v

Article Source: Legal Reader

02/07/2023

AI and Genetics Could Help Doctors Treat Alcohol Addiction, Research Shows

Article Excerpt: Imagine a patient has been diagnosed with alcohol use disorder, and their health care provider is reviewing medication options to help them curb their drinking. The provider asks the patient some basic questions, like alcohol cravings and stress levels, and collects a blood sample for genetic testing. A computer model uses this information to determine which medication would most likely support the patient with managing their alcohol use. With the help of the model, the provider gives a medication recommendation that is the best fit for their patient.

Full Article: https://tinyurl.com/58msbx3c

Article Source: Medical Xpress

02/06/2023

How Technology Can Help Solve Mental Health Care’s Biggest Barrier

Article Excerpt: From telehealth and TikTok to artificial intelligence and virtual reality, the mental health care industry is embracing technology — but it’s making many clinicians uneasy. From concerns about the ethics of mental health influencers to the inaccuracy of mental health advice on TikTok and to complaints about teens misdiagnosing themselves, many experts are uncomfortable about the role technology is playing in mental health support. But technology can also help solve what’s arguably the industry’s biggest issue: access. Given the ongoing mental health crisis and the fact that many people lack adequate access to quality mental health care, it’s essential to strike a balance between technological innovation, the pace of clinical validation, and high ethical and safety standards to ensure that rigorous, culturally centered mental health support is widely available at a time when it’s so desperately needed.

Full Article: https://tinyurl.com/4d4vk7pr

Article Source: STAT News

02/01/2023

‘There’s a Sense of Urgency’: How Wearables Could Reshape Addiction Treatment

Article Excerpt: Wearables offer addiction treatment providers tantalizing opportunities to improve care outcomes. Increasingly sophisticated devices are now available at affordable price points. Effortless data collection opens the door to more objectivity in a highly subjective field. But there’s a serious problem. Researchers and practitioners still need to figure out what to do with the mountains of data that wearables could produce.

Full Article: https://tinyurl.com/5n968229

Article Source: Behavioral Health Business