Critical Success Factors for Electronic Therapy—A Delphi Study

E-therapy employs a cross-section of online psychotherapies that use many of the same traditional face-to-face techniques as psychotherapy by exploiting electronic synchronous communication between a patient and trained therapists (counselors, psychoanalyst’s, or other licensed practitioners). A Delphi study of practicing therapists revealed five critical success factors (CSFs) (technological, managerial, empathic, service quality, and legal) that are important influences in the implementation of e-therapy services. Results suggest that managerial and legal factors hinder wider acceptance of e-therapy services. Secure and effective communication channels and protection of patient data emerge as important themes in the context of the five CSFs as concerns of potential e-therapists in wanting to provide effective care to patients

COVID-19 Changes the Nature of Tele-Mental Health: A Scope Review

COVID-19 temporarily removed legal restrictions, institutional hurdles, organizational impediments, and technological barriers to telemental health implementations that allow mental health therapists to apply virtual meeting technologies to serve their patients. Therapists transitioned from an under-appreciated health sub-specialty small business model to essential caregiver status needing management and technological expertise to measure service quality and outcomes. A systematic literature review identified factors essential for mental health workers and organizations transitioning patient therapy models from face-to-face to online support services under pandemic restrictions. This study revealed that management, technology, health services, and legal issues represent four critical areas of e-health research during the pandemic restrictions. This study suggests that telehealth applications require alterations in both the training and skills of the providers and the need for effective management of the telehealth business as digital mental health platforms supplant traditional delivery channels. Post-pandemic telehealth applications should be a blended approach that combines the best experiences from traditional treatments and virtual ones based on the digital skills of patients and healthcare providers

Visit Your Therapist in Metaverse - Designing a Virtual Environment for Mental Health Counselling

The emergence of the metaverse as a virtual world platform has opened up new possibilities for the use of immersive technologies in healthcare. This paper aims to explore the potential of the metaverse for healthcare and show how metaverse should be designed. We conduct a study based on design science research and derive design principles for the designing of a virtual environment for mental health counselling. We evaluate each of these design principles and describe how they can be applied in a practical solution. The results indicate that the metaverse holds significant promise for improving healthcare delivery and enhancing patient outcomes. Our study thus contributes to the emerging field of metaverse in healthcare by providing a design approach for the development of applications that can serve as a virtual environment for therapeutic sessions between medical therapists and patients