We are at a really interesting moment in time. Technology that already has had such a big impact, on entertainment and so many aspects of our lives, can really start to change health care. If you ask the question “What parts of health care can technology transform?”–mental health could be one of the biggest.<\/div>\n
Technology can cover much of the diagnostic process because you can use sensors and collect information about behavior in an objective way. Also, a lot of the treatments for mental health are psychosocial interventions, and those can be done through a smartphone. And most importantly, it can affect the quality of care, which is a big issue, especially for psychosocial interventions.<\/p>\n
What do you mean by treating over the phone?<\/font><\/strong> One of the best treatments for depression is cognitive behavior therapy. It’s building a set of skills for managing your mood. You can do it with a phone as well as face to face. A lot of people with severe depression or social phobia or PTSD don’t want to go in to see someone. This lowers the bar. <\/p>\n\n
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Is it possible to diagnose mental illness with a phone?<\/font><\/strong> I’d say you can collect information over the phone that can help people manage their own treatment. Your question rests on a paradigm that is completely shifting. The old paradigm is you go to the doctor and they write a prescription. Whether you call it a diagnosis or just identifying the issue, there is an awful lot that can be done online. There is an attachment for your smartphone than can see the tympanic membrane, and pediatricians can make a diagnosis [of ear infection] online. It’s a world where you want to get the right treatments at the right time for the right people. As a consumer, you are close to the source of the information. All of this is a different paradigm that we are moving into. <\/p>\nIs Alphabet’s approach to mental illness going to be primarily technological or biological?<\/font><\/strong> I don’t know that. We are going to explore what the opportunities are. We know their sweet spot is in data analytics. What they do really well is figure out how to analyze data. The opportunity is to take that skill and answer biological questions. What that means in terms of what projects the life science team takes on in mental health is totally undefined. Part of my move there is to figure it out.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\nAs a medical student in the 1960s, I was in a new place and the only people I knew were other medical students. A couple of my early friends were local, had grown up in the town. Through them I met their longtime friends who weren’t in medicine. One such person was the son of a successful businessman, and his path was set for life. But, in spite of my own aversion to business, we really hit it off. One day, he explained why, and gave me a phrase that’s still with me. He casually quipped, "
You’re a breakthrough<\/font><\/em>·<\/strong>freak – just like me<\/font><\/em>." I’d never thought of it that way, but it was completely on target. I read science fiction [the sciency<\/em> kind]. I kept up with the latest science advances and technologies, and fantasized about where they might lead. I was in medical school as a prelude to a research career. He had casually nailed my diagnosis. <\/div>\nMuch later, I was forced to practice medicine by being drafted into the Air Force after an Internal Medicine Residency and an NIH Research fellowship. Within a short period of time, I realized that practicing medicine was not only relevant and engaging, it got me out of my head. Did I want to do something that actually mattered, or spend my life being just a breakthrough<\/font><\/em>·<\/strong>freak<\/font><\/em>? How that had come to be and how it translated into the rest of my life is another story. But for this moment, my point is that I know a breakthrough<\/font><\/em>·<\/strong>freak<\/font><\/em> when I see one. And Tom Insel has a terminal case. I hasten to add that there’s nothing wrong with being a breakthrough<\/font><\/em>·<\/strong>freak<\/font><\/em>. Probably most breakthroughs<\/font><\/em> are made by breakthrough<\/font><\/em>·<\/strong>freaks<\/font><\/em> repurposed as visionarie<\/font><\/em>s [and I’d bet that Google is filled to overflowing with examples].<\/p>\nReading Insel’s blogs for a number of years, he bounces from thing to thing leaving a trail of projects in a string behind him. Google is actually a much better fit for a serial
breakthrough<\/font><\/em>·<\/strong>freak<\/font><\/em> than the NIMH. He will likely be part of a think·<\/strong><\/font><\/em>tank rather than the man in charge, and that might just work [though I’m betting there will be a bunch of pop-psychology apps coming our way]. But maybe he’ll land on something visionary<\/font><\/em> after all…<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Why America’s Top Mental Health Researcher Joined Alphabet Tom Insel explains why he’s ready to give Silicon Valley a try. MIT Technology Review By Antonio Regalado September 21, 2015 We are at a really interesting moment in time. Technology that already has had such a big impact, on entertainment and so many aspects of our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60112"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60139,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60112\/revisions\/60139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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