Chelsea N. Di Polito, PharmD, BCPP
Assistant Director of the Peer Review for Mental Health Drugs Program
University of Maryland School of Pharmacy
Baltimore, Maryland
In an era where technology is a necessary part of our day-to-day, it often feels like we can’t thrive without our phone and the many applications that make it personal to us. Thanks to digital therapeutics (DTx), phones have become an important component of treatment. Mental health DTx are application-based programs which aid patients in navigating treatment for their mental health disorder(s). Available applications cover diagnoses ranging from insomnia to attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder to various substance use disorders. Treatment may include counseling services, medication reminders, gaming programs, and more. Many of them also require a prescription to access the software. The programs are available from pediatrics to geriatrics, and many find benefit in using these resources alongside other treatment modalities such as therapy and medications.
To those who have never heard of mental health DTx, or have never used one of these programs, this might sound like a direction to send our patients for an added level of care. That being said, there are only a select number of applications which have obtained clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), yet there are thousands of programs out there easy to download, free, and simple to use. How do we know which applications are helpful? How do we know that the care they promise is exactly what the patient receives? Why are they FDA-cleared, and not FDA-approved? All these questions and more will be answered at the 2024 AAPP Annual Meeting from our session on mental health DTx!
John Torous, MD, MBI
Director of Digital Psychiatry, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
Boston, Massachusetts
Dr. John Torous is director of the digital psychiatry division, in the Department of Psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), a Harvard Medical School affiliated teaching hospital, where he also serves as a staff psychiatrist and assistant professor. At a system level, Dr. Torous is the medical director of behavioral health informatics for Beth Israel Lahey Health. He has a background in electrical engineering and computer sciences and received an undergraduate degree in the field from UC Berkeley before attending medical school at UC San Diego. He completed his psychiatry residency, fellowship in clinical informatics, and master's degree in biomedical informatics at Harvard. Dr. Torous is active in investigating the potential of mobile mental health technologies for psychiatry and has published over 250 peer reviewed articles and 5 book chapters on the topic. He directs the Digital Psychiatry Clinic at BIDMC which seeks to improve access to and quality of mental health care through augmenting treatment with digital innovations. Dr. Torous serves as editor-in-chief for the journal JMIR Mental Health, web editor for JAMA Psychiatry, and currently chairs the American Psychiatric Association’s Health IT Committee.
Digital Therapeutics in Mental Health is one of the keynote sessions for the 2024 AAPP Annual Meeting. The session is scheduled for Monday, April 8, 2024, from 8:30am-9:45am. This session will address the following learning objectives:
Please join us on Monday morning at 8:30am for an exciting journey into the world of mental health DTx. Upon the conclusion of the session, you will be able to make recommendations to your patients about available software programs that might aid them in their recovery, while also informing and educating them about the realities, benefits, and expected outcomes.