GeekyAnts Digital Solutions To Promote Mental Healthcare

Technology has been tested and proven effective in many advanced and innovative industries and is now extending and applying its benefits to more regulated ones. One of them is Health Care. However, mental health services is still an area of healthcare that has lagged behind and is often overlooked in every aspect, including technology.

According to WHO global health estimates, over 300 million people around the world suffer from depression and 264 million suffer from anxiety.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an evident spike in mental health issues. A recent study reported that isolation during lockdown has increased the overall levels of anxiety and depression in adults by 50%, compared to standard values. This is the time where medical practitioners are urging people to talk about their issues and during these times of social distancing, the best possible medium for that is technology. Hence, going digital to cater to the needs of people suffering from mental illnesses is vital.

With almost every consumer equipped with smart and inter-connected devices, mobility has paved the path for increasing consumer accessibility and patient engagement. According to the Journal of Medical Internet Research, 58% of mobile phone users have downloaded at least one health-related mobile app. Studies have shown that online treatment for a wide range of mental health issues and approaches can reach a standardised care level. It’s time for the mental health industry to consider how to leverage the widespread adoption of mobile devices to help achieve individual therapy goals.

As Geeks, we are always curious to work in all fields. One of the predominant sectors where we’ve had opportunities to work in and explore is HealthCare. We can gladly say that our engineering team has provided the best solutions and helped many clients in the healthcare sector to go digital. However, digital transformation can be a complex process, especially for the mental health care sector. Let’s look at the few challenges faced by it.

Challenges in Mental Health Care industry :

• The stigma around mental health can cause people to not seek treatment.
• Lack of constant support.
• Mental illness patients often feel disgrace in disclosing their illness publicly.
• Availability of treatment in remote areas.
• Privacy for app users.
• Challenges in integrating mental health care records into the EHR

GeekyAnts’ contribution to Mental Health Care Industry

We often notice that mental health patients feel alone between their therapy sessions and are reluctant to talk about their illness. We have developed an application for one of our clients where the mentally ill people can have a group chat with people facing similar conditions without disclosing their real names.

The application has served the following needs:

• The app helped patients to chat with their support group 24/7 and make VoIP group calls with a therapist who provides treatment and empathy so they never feel alone.
• The application was built with Artificial Intelligence (AI) safeguards, watching for language abuse and emergencies in the group.
• The users have an option to enter the groups with anonymous names, so most of the patients don’t feel stigmatic.
• The application has met the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act compliance (HIPAA) and ensures data protection against patients information.
• Constant support from group moderators.

Because of the pandemic, we have observed that application downloads in Play Store and App Store have spiked up in 2- 3 months. As a builder of this application, we felt esteemed to have a role in improving mental health treatment conditions.

Technologies Used:

• Being an industry pioneer in React & React Native and considering the application requirements and its usability, we have built a mobile application in React Native and Web application in React and FeatherJS was used with Redux & mobx-state-tree to manage states.
• As it’s a messenger app, PubNub was the API used to enable chat services.
• MixPanel was used for application behaviour management.
• Application has been built with end to end encryption in order to meet the HIPPA compliance and data sensitivity.

Conclusion

Due to the increasing incidences of chronic diseases across the globe, mental health services can reap profound benefits from digitalization.As per Grand View Research report on behavioral health care software, the global health care software and services market size was valued at USD 2.1 billion in 2019 and unfortunately, it is expected to expand at a CAGR of 11.1% over the forecast period. Professionals believe that mental health recovery is a process and sustained recovery involves learning about the illness and effective treatment as well as empowerment with the support of peers and family members.

Mental health providers can bend digital tools in this recovery lifecycle. To begin with, the diagnosis can be done with Mental health test apps and followed by a personalized medication and psychotherapy through Telemental health apps. Providers can track physical fitness measures like diet, exercise and sleeping patterns of their patients through Fitness apps and finally one can enrol themselves in Peer support apps in order to avoid chronic loneliness.

In this current situation, we have noticed that many people are panicking to step out and consult a mental health professional. One can say that digitalization is the only possible way to cater the ill patients and digital transformation is the first step — one that is well within reach.