The New Gold Standard in Online Delivered Behavioral Health Programs

Recent reforms in the US healthcare space are seeing an exponential increase in demand for care and also a regulation of esteem between physical and behavioral healthcare. Healthcare providers are under increasing pressure to provide cost-effective and high quality services to a large number of individuals. Online delivered interventions have the potential to provide a solution to healthcare providers as they can provide accessible and flexible healthcare. Online delivered behavioral health programs have developed an empirical base. The majority of this evidence-base has originated in Europe and Australia. The US healthcare market is now in a position to realize the benefits of online delivered behavioral health programs that offer excellent solutions to many of the difficulties in accessing behavioral healthcare in the US. While some guidelines and other operational characteristics have been developed, no standard setting out what is required of any connected health intervention is established. The US can look to the empirical base from developments and research worldwide, and also to thought leaders who are integrating the available evidence-base to shape standards of excellence for the future of online delivered behavioral health interventions. To that end the poster outlines some of the attributes, drawn from the evidence-base, that could be considered to be some of the necessary criteria needed to characterize any Gold Standard intervention. This set of attributes would therefore define excellence in connected healthcare delivery and help inform best practice. It is therefore proposed that a gold standard online-delivered program for behavioral health should include at least some of the following points: 1. Include the use of evidence-based and empirically supported content 2. Focus on accountable care and deliver on effective clinical outcomes 3. Be developed on robust, engaging, secure and responsive technologies 4. Be informed and shaped by behavioral health subject matter experts’ clinical expertise 5. Be patient-centric: involve users in the development and evaluation process and a high degree of personalization 6. Have research and evaluation that supports its effectiveness