"Opportunitites and Challenges in Applying Digital Health Technology for Addiction Health Services Research"

8:30-10:00 am

Speakers

• Alisa Busch, Chief Medical Information Officer, McLean Hospital
• Katharine Bradley, Senior Investigator, Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute
• Adam Gordon, Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry, University of Utah School of Medicine
• Tingting Liu, Research Fellow, Technology and Translational Research Unit, Translational Addiction Medicine Branch, National Institute on Drug Abuse
• Andrew Quanbeck, Associate Professor, Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, University of Wisconsin

Digital health technologies (such as electronic health records [EHRs] and health applications [“apps”]) offer new health services research opportunities to evaluate and improve the quality of addiction care. These opportunities include details of clinical information at the patient and population health level not available in claims data, and to tailor care to subsets of populations and evaluate outcomes. Further, there are opportunities for a wide range of research methodological skills sets—such as observational or randomized controlled design, computational data science, generative artificial intelligence (AI), software development, implementation science, and qualitative or mixed methods. But there are also important methodological challenges. For example, EHR adoption lags for behavioral health providers in general, and addiction providers in particular, in part due to the federal privacy law 42 CFR Part 2. Additionally, EHRs often contain incomplete and poor-quality data, with crucial clinical information embedded in notes, necessitating advanced computational techniques for extraction. Apps pose unique challenges—such as ensuring sustained patient engagement for outcomes measurement, and whether or how to integrate their use (and data) into routine care. Recent advancements in generative AI, combined with digital health technologies offer important opportunities to improve care but also pose challenges and concerns that need to be addressed to fully realize these benefits.

This 90-minute panel, which is sponsored by the Brandeis-Harvard NIDA P30 SPIRE Center, will include investigators experienced in using digital health technology in addiction health services research. They will discuss opportunities, challenges, and lessons learned. The moderator, Dr. Busch, will provide introductions and an initial overview (5-7 minutes). The moderator will then provide questions or prompts to the panel to generate a robust discussion among panelists. Audience questions and interaction will be encouraged.