Virtual care delivers mental health benefits: CEDA

The last two years of global disruption has led to significant mental health pressures, with individuals largely turning to virtual care to improve their quality of life and for doctors to improve patient outcomes.

The Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) hosted a virtual panel discussing the benefits that virtual care can provide for patients, beyond simply telehealth solutions.

According to Thomas Crawford, health and human services technology business lead at KPMG, despite initial apprehension of the benefits of a healthcare offering without in-person contact, virtual care has proven itself when it comes to supporting patients’ mental health needs.

“Many people value what in technical terms we call it an omnichannel way of engaging them, that may be a chat service or video conference, particularly where there's an existing relationship in place. Virtual care is not only being shown to be effective, but critical delivery of care,” said Crawford.

“And I think it's something that will continue to emerge and mental health may actually become a leader in the area of the adoption of virtual care.”

While Covid has exacerbated the critical shortage of professionals in mental health and other clinical areas, the sector has relied on virtual care to meet demand, especially when it comes to at home treatments.

According to Shehaan Fernando, regional director for virtual care, Philips Australia and New Zealand, “It's about how patients transfer from an acute care settings into homecare settings and certainly in the mental health space, being able to be treated at home in the comfort of a patient's environment is fundamental to how they can improve in terms of achieving better goals for themselves and reducing the use of health resources as well.”

Fernando highlights the siloed nature of the health care system, where mental and physical health are often considered and therefore treated as mutually exclusive. But research reveals that there are tangible links between the two, and digital can play a role in bridging this divide.

“Four out of five people living with mental health issues have a coexisting physical illness as well. And we know that patients with mental health conditions have at least two to three times higher likelihood of diabetes, and a six times more likelihood of cardiovascular disease. So trying to think of mental health different to how you manage their physical health is not something you want to manage in terms of how you're delivering that care to patients,” he said.

“With virtual care, the ability to bring these two modalities together becomes much easier because as you're treating these patients you're able to follow them in their healthcare journey when they go into their home as well and wrap around their care in a more holistic way.”

Gerbrand van de Beek, chief digital officer at Mentaal Beter, Netherlands argues virtual care can provide better outcomes for patients by leveraging data.

The organisation is working to optimise its 12 years of outcomes data in order to develop an algorithm that measures a patient and a provider to determine if the relationship is a good match.

Mentaal Beter is also using VR in trauma therapy, said van de Beek.

“We can measure the outcomes of the intervention that we showed to the patient and give feedback to both the patient and the provider to see what the next logical and effective step is in the treatment of the therapy.”

While the government has directed $100 million to support an increase in telehealth over the next four years, van de Beek stresses that online treatment is about more than video-calling.

“That's only one step in treatment. There are multiple ways of treating patients with an online platform," he ends.