Dear TelehealthNews Colleague,

Please enjoy these snippets of the recently published "Future of Telepsychology, Telehealth, and Various Technologies in Psychological Research and Practice" from "Professional Psychology: Research and Practice," Vol 43(6), Dec 2012, 613-621. It was a joint project, with authored with Myron L. Pulier, Joseph P. McMenamin, & Les Posen and myself. While it was written primarily for a psychology audience, the issues discussed in the article apply to all behavioral disciplines.

First snippet:

Two potent forces -- the technological expansion of health care delivery and heightened consumer expectations--present psychologists with the imperative to efficiently and ethically leverage new tools and systems to enhance practice, research, education, training, and policy. Despite individual psychologists choosing to adopt or resist the profound changes in delivery of and demand for behavioral health care services, administrators, clinicians, and their professional organizations should recognize the nature, advantages, and dangers inherent in the changes, anticipate how technology will continue to transform practice, and prepare for the expected opportunities and challenges.

Second snippet:

Technology does not bring unalloyed good news for psychologists. Patients sometimes prefer telephone and Internet-based interactions above in-person meetings with psychologists (Mohr et al., 2010), even though the quality of psychology resources directly available to consumers is inconsistent (Klein et al., 2010). Using technology, primary care physicians may achieve outcomes comparable to those of psychotherapists (Shandley et al., 2008). Consumers can independently access certain fully automated psychological tests and other interventions online (Andrews, Cuijpers, Craske, McEvoy, & Titov, 2010), but effectiveness and standardized, ethical administration generally need far more attention. There is thus a great need for higher-quality research (Hailey, Roine, & Ohinmaa, 2008; Whitten, Johannessen, Soerensen, Gammon, & Mackert, 2007), particularly in evidence-based methods for bringing treatment safely into the "unsupervised" setting of patients' homes (Luxton, Sirotin, & Mishkind, 2010).

Conclusion:

Psychologists currently are at a crossroads. Their future depends on the speed with which they organize to make themselves more relevant in the current technological marketplace. To date, their involvement with ICT lags that of other health care disciplines (Maheu et al., 2001; Maheu et al., 2004) as well as nonhealth care groups online. Each psychologist needs to decide whether, when, and how to leverage technology. Similarly, each professional association and organization needs to decide whether to allocate needed resources to shepherd technology adoption or to take a back seat to other disciplines.

Drop into my blog to leave your comment, see the full PDF of this article in WORD format, or review my additional comments and resources: http://telehealth.org/future

Happy Holidays!

Marlene

Marlene M. Maheu, Ph.D.
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