Forum explores digital solutions to mental health challenge

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Picture: eMental Health lead at AUT’s eHealth centre Anil Thapliyal speaking at the eMental Health Expert Forum

eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

The huge potential of technology to help deliver mental health services was discussed at an eMental Health Expert Forum in Auckland last month.

Ministry of Health acting deputy director data and digital Ann-Marie Cavanagh said the number of people accessing mental health services has risen to 3.6 per cent of the population and there is also a significant unmet need.

Speaking at Auckland University of Technology’s Centre for eHealth, she said early intervention is key and the Ministry’s new mental health directorate is working on the transformation necessary to respond to the challenge.

Cavanagh told the audience that digital mental health services are an emerging area of service delivery and opportunities can only be realised if barriers to its adoption are minimised.

eMental Health lead at AUT’s eHealth centre Anil Thapliyal said that in the 2016–17 year more than three quarters of people who committed suicide were not in any kind of health intervention at the time.

Putting more money into the health system is therefore not necessarily the answer to the problem and other approaches need to be examined.

Graham Panther, a New Zealander living in Melbourne, gave an inspirational presentation on a website he co-developed – with no investment in technology – called the Big Feels Club.

He said many of the interventions to prevent suicide do not address the big issue of loneliness. The online club helps connect people going through similar issues and feedback from the community is that “this is something new and profoundly valuable”.

The Big Feels Club has more than 3000 active members. It links to interesting articles and information on mental health, has a blog and produces podcasts, with its recent podcast on suicide set to be downloaded more than one million times.

Founder of iMOKO app Lance O’Sullivan spoke about the need to disrupt the health system. He said that innovation is just “doing the same things a bit better”, whereas disruption makes the current way of doings things obsolete.

O’Sullivan announced that he is working with Auckland-based artificial intelligence company Soul Machines on a prototype of a digital mental health navigator that can interpret people’s emotional expressions.

“If you start using smart technology in smart ways, the possibilities can be exponentially awesome,” he told the audience.

“You have to build for tomorrow as if you build for today, you are already out of date.”

Le Va chief executive Monique Faleafa gave an update on the Aunty Dee app, which won last year’s AUT Centre for eHealth innovation leadership award.

The digital wellbeing tool was co-created with Pacific Island teenagers and helps them deal with issues like addiction and relationship problems.

Le Va has now partnered with Home Care Medical to provide a webchat function for when a person is identified through word recognition software as potentially suicidal.

“Potentially, through a fantastic partnership and a little bit of software, we’ve saved eight lives this year,” said Faleafa.

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