Digital Technology in Psychiatry: Survey Study of Clinicians

Abstract

Background Digital technology has the potential to transform psychiatry, but its adoption has been limited. The proliferation of telepsychiatry during the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the urgency of optimizing technology for clinical practice. Understanding clinician attitudes and preferences is crucial to effective implementation and patient benefit. Objective Our objective was to elicit clinician perspectives on emerging digital technology. Methods Clinicians in a large psychiatry department (inpatient and outpatient) were invited to complete a web-based survey about their attitudes toward digital technology in practice, focusing on implementation, clinical benefits, and expectations about patients’ attitudes. The survey consisted of 23 questions that could be answered on either a 3-point or 5-point Likert scale. We report the frequencies and percentages of responses. Results In total, 139 clinicians completed the survey—they represent a variety of years of experience, credentials, and diagnostic subspecialties (response rate 69.5%). Overall, 83.4% (n=116) of them stated that digital data could improve their practice, and 23.0% (n=32) of responders reported that they had viewed patients’ profiles on social media. Among anticipated benefits, clinicians rated symptom self-tracking (n=101, 72.7%) as well as clinical intervention support (n=90, 64.7%) as most promising. Among anticipated challenges, clinicians mostly expressed concerns over greater time demand (n=123, 88.5%) and whether digital data would be actionable (n=107, 77%). Furthermore, 95.0% (n=132) of clinicians expected their patients to share digital data. Conclusions Overall, clinicians reported a positive attitude toward the use of digital data to not only improve patient outcomes but also highlight significant barriers that implementation would need to overcome. Although clinicians’ self-reported attitudes about digital technology may not necessarily translate into behavior, our results suggest that technologies that reduce clinician burden and are easily interpretable have the greatest likelihood of uptake.