Beyond Telehealth: Advances in Digital Mental Health Research and Practical Clinical Considerations for Smartphone Apps in Care

Thursday, 09 November 2023, 4:15 pm CET, Zoom

About John Torous

John Torous is director of the digital psychiatry division, in the Department of Psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BDIMC), 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.

About the Lecture

As the use of telepsychiatry in mental health via video/phone visits soars, it is important to also consider how asynchronous telepsychiatry tools like smartphone apps can also advance care. This talk will focus on the evolving field of smartphone digital phenotyping and consider the potential of real-time data capture via smartphones, methods necessary to analyze such data, and practical clinical applications of these tools. Looking at the evolving smartphone mental health ecosystem, the talk will also cover the topic of app evaluation and supporting research for making informed choices related to smartphone apps for use in research or patient care.

We are pleased to invite you to join this guest lecture. Registration is not required. Please be aware that we will be recording this guest lecture and will be making it available in our teaching library. If you have any questions, please contact Giuliana Breu (giuliana.breu@unisg.ch) before the start of the guest lecture. Also note that this guest lecture is part of our Digital Health Forum course.