Publications by authors named "Brandon Welch"

Background: Homework is implemented with variable effectiveness in real-world therapy settings, indicating a need for innovative solutions to homework challenges. We developed Adhere.ly, a user-friendly, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act-compliant web-based platform to help therapists implement homework with youth clients and their caregivers.

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Background: A 2017 survey of patient perspectives showed overall willingness and comfort to use telemedicine, but low actual use. Given recent growth and widespread exposure of patients to telemedicine, patient preferences are likely to have changed.

Objective: This study aimed to (1) identify demographic trends in patient preferences and experiences; (2) measure ease of use and satisfaction of telemedicine; and (3) measure changes in telemedicine use, willingness, and comfort since 2017.

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Virtual reality (VR) can enhance mental health care. In particular, the effectiveness of VR-based exposure therapy (VRET) has been well-demonstrated for treatment of anxiety disorders. However, most applications of VRET remain localized to clinic spaces.

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Virtual reality (VR) is an emerging technology that can enhance experiences and outcomes in mental healthcare. However, mental health therapists have been slow to adopt VR into practice. Implementation of telehealth-based VR therapy (tele-VR) could catalyze adoption and innovation in mental healthcare.

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Objectives: Missed appointments can lead to treatment delays and adverse outcomes. Telemedicine may improve appointment completion because it addresses barriers to in-person visits, such as childcare and transportation. This study compared appointment completion for appointments using telemedicine versus in-person care in a large cohort of patients at an urban academic health sciences center.

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Background: Self-administered web-based questionnaires are widely used to collect health data from patients and clinical research participants. REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture; Vanderbilt University) is a global, secure web application for building and managing electronic data capture. Unfortunately, stakeholder needs and preferences of electronic data collection via REDCap have rarely been studied.

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Objective: Family health history (FHx) is an important tool in assessing one's risk towards specific health conditions. However, user experience of FHx collection tools is rarely studied. ItRunsInMyFamily.

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Background: Digital health and telemedicine are potentially important strategies to decrease health care's environmental impact and contribution to climate change by reducing transportation-related air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. However, we currently lack robust national estimates of emissions savings attributable to telemedicine.

Objective: This study aimed to (1) determine the travel distance between participants in US telemedicine sessions and (2) estimate the net reduction in carbon dioxide (CO) emissions attributable to telemedicine in the United States, based on national observational data describing the geographical characteristics of telemedicine session participants.

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Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, federal and state health policies allowed temporary flexibilities for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries, leading to a sharp increase in telemedicine use. However, many of the flexibilities that enabled innovation and growth in telemedicine continue temporarily since the federal emergency declaration ended in May 2023, and the United States has not made permanent decisions about telemedicine policy. Analysts have raised concerns about increased spending, program integrity, safety, and equity, and recommend strengthening oversight.

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Telemedicine enables critical human communication and interaction between researchers and participants in decentralized research studies. There is a need to better understand the overall scope of telemedicine applications in clinical research as the basis for further research. This narrative, nonsystematic review of the literature sought to review and discuss applications of telemedicine, in the form of synchronous videoconferencing, in clinical research.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study explored barriers and facilitators to using a chatbot tool for collecting family cancer history (FCH) in clinical settings and aimed to understand clinicians' views on its implementation.
  • It involved surveys and interviews to assess the chatbot's acceptability and integration into clinical workflows, gathering feedback from a range of healthcare providers and staff.
  • Results indicated strong support for the chatbot, highlighting the need for customizable implementation strategies to better fit different clinical workflows and enhance the adoption of FCH tools.
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Background: Consensus guidelines and recommendations play an important role in fostering quality, safety, and best practices, as they represent an expert interpretation of the biomedical literature and its application to practice. However, it is unclear whether the recent collective experience of implementing telemedicine and the concurrent growth in the evidence base for teledermatology have resulted in more robust guidance.

Objective: The objective of this review was to describe the extent and nature of currently available guidance, defined as consensus guidelines and recommendations available for telemedicine in dermatology, with guidance defined as consensus or evidence-based guidelines, protocols, or recommendations.

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Virtual reality (VR) can enhance mental health care. In particular, the effectiveness of VR-based exposure therapy (VRET) has been well-demonstrated for treatment of anxiety disorders. However, most applications of VRET remain localized to clinic spaces.

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The COVID-19 pandemic led to a rapid transition to telemedicine for mental health care and redefined many providers' work environments and practices. The purpose of the study was to investigate the impact of work location on telemental health (TMH) benefits, disruptions, and concerns to further understand the rapid implementation of telemedicine for mental health treatment. A sample of 175 practicing TMH providers completed an online survey between July and August 2020.

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Objective: To investigate determinants of telemental health (TMH) providers' openness to discuss and confidence to use online mental health information with patients, focusing on providers' eHealth literacy and perceived usefulness of online MH information.

Methods: TMH providers ( = 472) completed a web-based survey with questions about discussing and using online health information with patients, perceived usefulness of the Internet as a source of patient information, and eHealth literacy.

Results: Providers were open to discussing online health information with patients if they were not treating substance abuse disorders ( = -0.

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Introduction: Virtual conversational agents (i.e., chatbots) are an intuitive form of data collection.

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Background: Mental health care pivoted to telemedicine during the COVID-19 pandemic, and there is uncertainty around the sustainability of this rapid shift.

Objective: This study examined how intentions to continue using telemedicine after the COVID-19 pandemic are influenced by provider perceptions of usefulness, ease of use, and professional social influence, facilitating organizational conditions.

Methods: We conducted a web-based, cross-sectional survey of 369 telemental health providers between February and March 2021.

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Objective: Virtual conversational agents, or chatbots, have emerged as a novel approach to health data collection. However, research on patient perceptions of chatbots in comparison to traditional online forms is sparse. This study aimed to compare and assess the experience of completing a health assessment using a chatbot vs.

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To identify clinical and informational services that telemental health (TMH) providers need to be more successful in their practice. In February-March 2021, 472 TMH providers completed a cross-sectional survey. Providers indicated the degree to which they need clinical (e.

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The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated adoption of telemental health (TMH). Providers with limited TMH experience faced challenges during the rapid switch to remote patient care. We investigated TMH providers' perceptions about remote care one year into the pandemic according to providers adopted telemedicine (i.

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Article Synopsis
  • Identifying hereditary cancer risk based on family health history is complex, leading to many at-risk patients missing out on essential genetic counseling and testing due to provider limitations.
  • * This study develops a web-based system that automates the collection and assessment of family health history using chatbots and clinical practice guidelines.
  • * The resulting ontology covers a wide range of cancers and genetic factors, successfully assessing over 5000 cases and demonstrating quick evaluation times, showcasing an efficient approach for hereditary cancer risk screening.
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Phobias and related anxiety are common and costly mental health disorders. Experts anticipate the prevalence of phobias will increase due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Exposure therapies have been established as effective and reliable treatments for anxiety, including recent innovations in virtual reality-based exposure therapy (VRET).

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Introduction: Primary care providers (PCPs) and oncologists lack time and training to appropriately identify patients at increased risk for hereditary cancer using family health history (FHx) and clinical practice guideline (CPG) criteria. We built a tool, "ItRunsInMyFamily" (ItRuns) that automates FHx collection and risk assessment using CPGs. The purpose of this study was to evaluate ItRuns by measuring the level of concordance in referral patterns for genetic counseling/testing (GC/GT) between the CPGs as applied by the tool and genetic counselors (GCs), in comparison to oncologists and PCPs.

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Background: While telemedicine has been expanding over the past decade, the COVID-19-related restrictions regarding in-person care have led to unprecedented levels of telemedicine utilization. To the authors' knowledge, no studies to date have quantitatively analyzed both national and regional trends in telemedicine utilization during the pandemic, both of which have key implications for informing health policy.

Objective: This study aimed to investigate how trends in telemedicine utilization changed across the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Background: Family health history (FHx) is an effective tool for identifying patients at risk of hereditary cancer. Hereditary cancer clinical practice guidelines (CPG) contain criteria used to evaluate FHx and to make recommendations for genetic consultation. Comparing different CPGs used to evaluate a common set of FHx provides insight into how well the CPGs perform, the extent of agreement across guidelines, and how well they identify patients who should consider a cancer genetic consultation.

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