[Digital forms of service delivery for personalized crisis resolution and home treatment].

Abstract

BACKGROUND\nWard-equivalent treatment (StäB), a\xa0form of crisis resolution and home treatment in Germany, has been introduced in 2018 as a\xa0new model of mental health service delivery for people with an indication for inpatient care. The rapid progress in the field of information and communication technology offers entirely new opportunities for innovative digital mental health care, such as telemedicine, eHealth, or mHealth interventions.\n\n\nOBJECTIVE\nThis review aims to provide a\xa0comprehensive overview of novel digital forms of service delivery that may contribute to a\xa0personalized delivery of StäB and improving clinical and social outcomes as well as reducing direct and indirect costs.\n\n\nMETHOD\nThis work is based on a narrative review.\n\n\nRESULTS\nFour primary digital forms of service delivery have been identified that can be used for personalized delivery of StäB: (1)\xa0communication, continuity of care, and flexibility through online chat and video call; (2)\xa0monitoring of symptoms and behavior in real-time through ecological momentary assessment (EMA); (3)\xa0use of multimodal EMA data to generate and offer personalized feedback on subjective experience and behavioral patterns as well as (4)\xa0adaptive ecological momentary interventions (EMI) tailored to the person, moment, and context in daily life.\n\n\nCONCLUSION\nNew digital forms of service delivery have considerable potential to increase the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of crisis resolution, home treatment, and assertive outreach. An important next step is to model and initially evaluate these novel digital forms of service delivery in the context of StäB and carefully investigate their quality from the user perspective, safety, feasibility, initial process and outcome quality as well as barriers and facilitators of implementation.