HXD 2019

Personalized Psychiatric Mental Healthcare through Technology

Allison will present her treatment model for delivering personalized psychiatric and substance abuse care to people through technology. Her practice model includes the ability for patients to text their provider directly, self-schedule, and follow up with questions or side effects via text. On the provider end, she is working to create a user friendly electronic medical record and e-prescribing, all from a smartphone allowing for the clinicians to travel and have work-life balance.

Her inspiration occurred when she looked at the tragic statistic of physicians having the highest suicide rate of all professions. She thought about the reasons for this; they face the stigma of going to an office where their patients may also be in the waiting room, or may only have access to a colleague psychiatrist who they may be embarrassed to talk to about their mental health. Physicians do not have time to cancel patients to attend visits during 9am-5pm hours. These reasons transcend to all busy professionals, millennials, and the majority of people who hate phone calls and waiting on hold, taking time off of work, driving in traffic, and running into people they know in the waiting rooms. She thought of all these and developed an innovative practice model where patients may text her directly and start a visit instantly on their phone. As she expands to bring other providers on, she is developing an electronic health record specifically for psychiatry prescribing mental health clinicians with easy charting, billing, and collections. This technology allows clinicians to add tele-psychiatry to their regular practices. Technology brings psychiatric and substance abuse treatment to patients who may not otherwise receive care and across the nation.