Digital Health Supports for Mental Health and Addictions

Our team at the eHealth Centre of Excellence is here to assist the primary care providers in your OHT with the adoption and integration of digital health tools that can support them to provide informed, integrated care to their mental health & addictions patient population.

Our team offers a number of decision support tools that can be integrated directly into the clinician's EMR that are based on current best practice related to mental health and addictions.

Our Depression and Anxiety custom form supports clinicians in the screening and management of mental health. The form allows clinicians to gather, document and reference mental health metrics more efficiently at point of care. For those clinics who utilize tablets (see section below), this tool is compatible with the OCEAN platform.

Figure 1: Screenshot capturing main concerns and treatment goals

Figure 2: Screenshot capturing current treatment

Figure 3: Screenshot capturing assessment, coding conditions, plan, investigation and follow up method

There is also an EMR decision support tool to assist clinicans with appropriate opioid manangement.

The eHealth Centre of Excellence has conducted research that shows that patient tablets or eForms can support efficient screening, assessment and information management of their patient population.

Information submitted by the patient is uploaded directly into the provider's EMR and while tablets and eForms can be used for many purposes, the most prevalent use of tablets is for mental health assessments.

As our survey results indicate, mental health assessments facilitate more honest responses from patients who may not be comfortable discussing details about their mental health in a face-to-face interaction.

For the primary care provider, the assessments support a more comprehensive picture of the patient’s mental health condition, treatment goals, and potential risk for suicide – thereby ensuring that a safety plan for the patient is created where appropriate.

Other digital health solutions, such as eServices, Virtual Care, and ePrescribing, can also support patients with needs related to mental health and addictions.

Ontario eServices Program:

eConsult provides quick and secure access to expert advice from specialists, including psychiatrists.

If an in-person appointment is needed, eReferral can facilitate seamless referrals, with information autopopulated from the EMR directly into the referral form. Patients can receive email notifications about the status of their referral, reducing anxiety.

Virtual care can be an efficient and approachable manner of delivering care related to mental health and addictions, enabling patients to access care remotely from a location of their choice through a secure online platform.

ePrescribing enables primary care providers to send electronic prescriptions directly from their EMRs, keeping patients safe by ensuring that the prescriptions cannot be lost or altered.