Keep Up With McLean!
Receive the latest news in your inbox each month.
Tremendous advances in science and technology have enabled greater understanding of the brain, yet mental health care remains inaccessible and inadequate for much of the world’s population.
McLean Hospital’s Institute for Technology in Psychiatry (ITP) brings together thought leaders in health care, data science, technology, industry, patient advocacy, academic research, and more for this two-day summit to build on the promise of technology in the diagnosis and delivery of mental health care.
This event is targeted at an inclusive group of academics, data scientists, clinicians, technology developers, entrepreneurs, policymakers, investors, patient advocates, and health professionals who are interested in shaping the future of mental health care.
The ITP partners with like-minded organizations looking to integrate technology into the field of psychiatry to improve research and care. If you are interested in affiliating your brand with the Technology in Psychiatry Summit, please contact the ITP.
The 2020 Technology in Psychiatry Summit will be held on October 26-27, 2020 at Harvard Medical School’s Joseph B. Martin Conference Center in Boston.
Registration opens soon.
Deep discounts are available to students and academic trainees. Contact the ITP for details.
As research around digital psychiatry rapidly expands, it has become evident that there remains a vast potential for the application of technology across clinical populations. The 2019 summit will focus on understanding how the application of technology varies among children, adolescents, young adults, and older adults. The conference will further explore how technology can enhance care in major neuropsychiatric disorders such as autism and dementia. For the first time, the meeting will also invite panel proposals from researchers around the world. With this in mind, the theme of the summit will be “The Future of Mental Health Across the Life Span.”
With keynote addresses, panel discussions, and a poster session, attendees will examine the evolving state of global mental health efforts, cutting-edge trends in neurosciences, and new technologies and analytical tools that are cross-cutting traditionally separate disciplines to help address some of the world’s most challenging mental health problems.
Molly Coye, MD, MPH, is executive in residence at AVIA, the leading network for health systems seeking to innovate and transform through the deployment of digital solutions. At AVIA, she is the executive sponsor for the Medicaid Transformation Project, which brings together more than 20 health systems to focus on care models and scalable solutions addressing the needs of vulnerable populations. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine), a member of the Board of Directors of Aetna, Inc., and founded and led HealthTech, which became the premier forecasting organization for emerging technologies in health care. She has previously served as commissioner of Health for the State of New Jersey and director of the California State Department of Health Services.
Saul Levin, MD, MPA, FRCP-E, is the chief executive officer and medical director of the American Psychiatric Association (APA). He previously was the head of the Department of Health of Washington, DC, vice president for Science, Medicine & Public Health for the American Medical Association, and the president & CEO of MESAB (Medical Education for South Africans Blacks), an educational trust started during apartheid to provide medical and professional scholarships for Blacks to become doctors, dentists, and health care professionals. His career has focused on integrating primary care, mental health, and substance use disorders, for which he received the Royal College of Physicians fellowship. He is a full professor at Department of Psychiatry, George Washington University.
Wendy Nilsen, PhD, is a program director for the Smart and Connected Health Program in the Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering at the National Science Foundation. She is co-chair of the Health Information Technology Research and Development Program. Her work includes convening workshops to address methodology in mobile technology research, leading training institutes, and serving on numerous federal technology initiatives. Her interests span the areas of sensing, analytics, cyber-physical systems, information systems, big data and robotics, as they relate to health. Previously, she worked at the NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR).
Our initiative to build a more accessible future is made possible by the support of gracious companies with like-minded goals. Become a sponsor of the 2019 Technology in Psychiatry Summit to help us further our mission to close the gaps between study and practice in mental health care.
For more information on sponsoring the 2019 Technology in Psychiatry Summit, please contact Sue DeMarco at 617.855.3451.
We wish to thank the 2019 sponsors of the Technology in Psychiatry Summit.
We are also grateful for the support of our past sponsors.
The theme of the 2018 Technology in Psychiatry Summit was “Closing Gaps in Translation.” Lectures and panels covered the topic in the sense of using technology and pervasive sensing approaches to advance the detailed cross-species study of behavior in order to help bridge the human-nonhuman translational gap, as well as applying these approaches to improve mental health in under-resourced areas both globally and in the US.
Keynote speakers included Michelle A. Williams, SM, ScD, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Alex “Sandy” Pentland, PhD, MIT Connection Science and Human Dynamics Labs, and Bruce Cuthbert, PhD, NIMH Research Domain Criteria
The 2017 Technology in Psychiatry Summit was a first of its kind event targeted at bringing together the nation’s top technology and mental health experts to build on the promise of technology in the diagnosis and delivery of mental health care. Among the who’s who of presenters were Tom Insel, MD, former NIMH director, Ken Duckworth, MD, of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Roz Picard, ScD, of the Affective Computing Research Group at MIT, and Sarah Lenz Lock, JD, of the AARP.
Approximately 1 in 5 adults in the US—43.8 million, or 18.5%—experiences mental illness in a given year. (NAMI)
High income nations, on average, spend 5% of total health spending on mental health; for lower middle-income countries the figure is less than 2%. (WHO report)
Mental health workers account for only 1% of the global health workforce and 45% of the world’s population lives in a country with less than one psychiatrist per 100,000 people. (APA report)
Nearly nine-in-ten Americans today are online, up from about half in the early 2000s. (Pew Research Center)
Roughly 3/4 of Americans (77%) now own a smartphone. (Pew Research Center)
Today just over one-in-ten American adults are “smartphone-only” internet users—meaning they own a smartphone, but do not have traditional home broadband service. (Pew Research Center)
13% of Americans don’t use the internet. (Pew September 2016)
90% of the individuals in this survey (NAMI survey, plus academic source) owned more than one digital device such as a personal computer, tablet, or smartphone. 54% had access to smartphones compared to 64% of all Americans. Many survey respondents use their devices to cope with mental illness:
Most (72%-97%) patients with mental illness have reported the use of mobile phones for activities other than spoken conversations such as sending emails, web browsing, and social networking. (National Medical Journal of India)
Individuals with severe mental illness: “93% owned cellphones, 78% used text messaging, 50% owned smartphones, and 71% used social media such as Facebook.” (Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal)
“The average 18-25 year-old checks their phone 56 times/day.” (Bridianne O’Dea, TEDxYouth@Sydney) The phone is a direct portal.
“The global telehealth market is expected to be worth US$ 34.27 billion by the end of 2020, with North America being the largest market globally accounting for more than 40% of the global market size.” (HITconsultant)
“Three in five Americans are open to virtual support service options (e.g., video conference calls) with pharmaceutical companies to help them understand medications. This is especially true with millennials, as 70% want to leverage these modern technologies to communicate with their drug providers.” (Salesforce 2017 Connected Patient Report)
“Nearly three in four Americans (72%) say it’s important that their health insurance providers use modern tools—such as live chat/instant message and two-way video—when communicating with them.” (Salesforce 2017 Connected Patient Report)
“A majority of Americans currently communicate with their doctors via traditional channels to schedule appointments, with 80% using the phone.” (Salesforce 2017 Connected Patient Report)
Insurance companies: “Millennials are more than three times as likely than baby boomers (26% vs. 7%) to use their insurance companies to find health care providers.” (Salesforce 2017 Connected Pt Report)
Serious mental illness costs America $193.2 billion in lost earnings per year. (NAMI)
Mood disorders, including major depression, dysthymic disorder and bipolar disorder, are the third most common cause of hospitalization in the US for both youth and adults aged 18-44. (NAMI)
Smartphone ownership: “There are no differences in smartphone ownership among different racial and ethnic groups.” (Pew Research Center)
If there’s parity in tools, that means we can have parity in methods and quality of care delivered digitally.