Grant: Health System Impact Fellowships - PostDoc Central Canada 2 year

Research has demonstrated that a large majority of mental health outpatients indicate a desire to use smartphone tools alongside their care. Smartphone apps are ubiquitous and can aid in diagnosis, management and treatment of care. Apps can support clinicians with collecting diagnosis-related information, or allow clinicians to recommend wellness activities to their patients. Most work until date has focused on development, validation, and regulation of mental health apps, however the integration of these into patient and provider workflows remains a largely unexplored area of practice. This fellowship proposes a collaborative project between the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and Canada Health Infoway focused on developing a list of guidelines and recommendations for the integration of smartphone apps into mental health care. Through a phased approach, we will first evaluate the integration of a suicide safety planning app into care, and then build upon these findings by conducting an environmental scan (grey literature search, key informant interviews) of apps across Canada that have been integrated into mental health care. Following this, we will use an online Delphi approach to refine our list of recommendations and best practices for integration of mobile apps into mental health care. This final list will serve as a tool to educate a variety of audiences; it will be tailored to patients, family members, clinicians and administrators.