Stud Health Technol Inform
February 2025
Recent policy recommendations on the use of health data call for an understanding of privacy experiences and perspectives. A secondary analysis of a national survey was conducted to characterize public experiences views on digital health (n=2010). This study found that 69.
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February 2025
Co-design is an increasingly adopted approach in digital health to develop innovations that are more relevant and effective. Engaging people with lived/living experience at the outset is often recommended to maximize the value of co-design. This paper reports on the co-design of the co-design of a Patient Journey Dashboard-an approach where both the co-design process and dashboard are co-designed with patient partners from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.
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February 2024
The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health has implemented mechanisms to standardize routine data collection with the vision of a Learning Health System. To improve clinical decision-making and patient outcomes, a clinical dashboard was implemented to provide a real-time visualization of data from patient self-assessments and other physical and mental health indicators. This case report shares early findings of dashboard implementation to understand user uptake and improve fidelity of the technology and processes that need to support adoption.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArtificial intelligence, machine learning, and digital health innovations have tremendous potential to advance patient-centred, data-driven mental healthcare. To enable the clinical application of such innovations, the Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Canada's largest mental health hospital, embarked on a journey to co-create a digital learning health system called the BrainHealth Databank (BHDB). Working with clinicians, scientists, and administrators alongside patients, families, and persons with lived experience (PFLE), this hospital-wide team has adopted a systems approach that integrates clinical and research data and practices to improve care and accelerate research.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The increasing integration of digital health tools into care may result in a greater flow of personal health information (PHI) between patients and providers. Although privacy legislation governs how entities may collect, use, or share PHI, such legislation has not kept pace with digital health innovations, resulting in a lack of guidance on implementing meaningful consent. Understanding patient perspectives when implementing meaningful consent is critical to ensure that it meets their needs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: OpenNotes is the concept of patients having access to their health records and clinical notes in a digital form. In psychiatric settings, clinicians often feel uncomfortable with this concept, and require support during implementation.
Objective: This study utilizes an implementation science lens to explore clinicians' perceptions about using OpenNotes in Canadian psychiatric care contexts.
Background: Although EHR systems have become a critical part of clinical care, nurses are experiencing a growing burden due to documentation requirements, taking time away from other important clinical activities. There is a need to address the inefficiencies and challenges that nurses face when documenting in and using EHRs. The objective of this study is to engage nurses in generating ideas on how organizations can support and optimize nurses' experiences with their EHR systems, thereby improving efficiency and reducing EHR-related burden.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDigital mental health tools have the potential to support people affected by mental health conditions. A pan-Canadian survey was conducted to understand the current and future digital health needs. The results show that Canadians prioritized tools that support them in navigating the physical and digital mental healthcare systems and that are integrated into their care.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMachine learning models are often trained on sociodemographic features to predict mental health outcomes. Biases in the collection of race-related data can limit the development of useful and fair models. To assess the current state of this data in mental health research, we conducted a rapid review guided by Critical Race Theory.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNumerous benefits have been shown when OpenNotes functionality is present in a patient portal. Despite the benefits, many mental health providers have demonstrated concern with regards to sharing their clinical documentation with their patients electronically. This poster will describe a mixed-methods study protocol that aims to address the concerns of mental health providers by co-producing and contextualizing resources to support the uptake of OpenNotes by mental health providers in the Canadian context.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on population mental health has highlighted the potential for digital mental health to support the needs of those requiring care. This study sought to understand the digital mental health experiences and priorities of Canadians affected by mental health conditions (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGranting minors with online access to their personal health information (PHI) is a complex policy and implementation issue, requiring a balance of rapid changes in adolescent maturity and autonomy, adolescent need for privacy and confidentiality and care responsibilities of custodians and providers. There are currently no standard legislation or policies that enable access; however, most implementations use the age of majority or the mature minor doctrine as an approach - each with its own limitations. This paper highlights key legislative and implementation insights for organizations seeking to enable adolescents with online access to their PHI, calling for leadership to address this issue.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Canadians are increasingly gaining web-based access to digital health services, and they expect to access their data from these services through a central patient access channel. Implementing data sharing between these services will require patient trust that is fostered through meaningful consent and consent management. Understanding user consent requirements and information needs is necessary for developing a trustworthy and transparent consent management system.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe digital health landscape is rapidly evolving with regard to how society accesses and interacts with digital information and technologies. With a largely commercial marketplace, there are growing concerns that users are not fully informed about how their data are used. Canadian privacy legislation is currently undergoing modernization to improve the transparency of commercial information handling practices through the introduction of meaningful consent.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, the OpenNotes movement presents an optimal solution for virtual engagement through the sharing of clinical notes within mental health care settings. Therefore, we conducted interviews to discover how mental health clinicians interact with patients using OpenNotes. We integrated The Consolidated Framework for Intervention Research to establish implementation recommendations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Digital health initiatives such as patient portals, virtual care platforms, and smartphone-based apps are being implemented at a rapid pace in health care organizations worldwide. This is often done to improve access beyond traditional in-person care and enhance care quality. Recent studies have indicated that better outcomes of using these initiatives and technologies may be achieved when patients and their family members are engaged in all aspects of planning, implementation, use, and evaluation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInform Health Soc Care
January 2022
With the increased use of patient portals in acute and chronic care settings as a strategy to support patient care and improve patient-centric care, there is still little known about the impact of patient portals in mental health contexts. The purposes of this review were to: 1) identify the critical success factors for successful patient portal implementation and adoption among end-users that could be utilized in a mental health setting; 2) uncover what we know about existing mental health portals and their effectiveness for end-users; and 3) determine what indicators are being used to evaluate existing patient portals for end-users that may be applied in a mental health context. This scoping review was conducted through a search of six electronic databases including Medline, EMBASE, PsycINFO, and CINAHL for articles published between 2007 and 2021.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: As mental illness continues to affect 1 in 5 individuals, and the need for support has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, the promise of digital mental health tools remains largely unrealized due to a lack of uptake by patients and providers. Currently, most efforts on supporting the uptake of digital mental health tools remain fragmented across organizations and geography. There is a critical need to synthesize these efforts in order to provide a coordinated strategy of supporting the adoption of digital mental health tools.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The privacy of patients with mental health conditions is prominent in health information exchange (HIE) discussions, given that their potentially sensitive personal health information (PHI) may be electronically shared for various health care purposes. Currently, the patient privacy perspective in the mental health context is not well understood because of the paucity of in-depth patient privacy research; however, the evidence suggests that patient privacy perspectives are more nuanced than what has been assumed in the academic and health care community.
Objective: This study aimed to generate an understanding on how patients with mental health conditions feel about privacy in the context of HIE in Canada.
Background: Health information exchange (HIE), the ability for health information technology (HIT) to share patient data, can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare; however, this ability may cause patient concern about their ability to control who can access their health records (i.e., privacy).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFStud Health Technol Inform
August 2019
Patient privacy concerns are often cited as a barrier to health information exchange (HIE) implementations; however, the current understanding of patient perspective is limited due to a fragmented approach to patient privacy research. The limited evidence suggests that the patient privacy perspective is context-dependent and may involve benefit-risk tradeoffs. A standardized approach to the contextual factors would allow for more consistent assessment, providing a better understanding or explanation of the contextual factors influencing the patient privacy perspective and their attitudes towards HIE.
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