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Building partnerships: a pilot study of stakeholders’ attitudes on technology disruption in behavioral health delivery and research

  • Original Research
  • Published:
Translational Behavioral Medicine

Abstract

Collaborations between scientists, care providers, and technology industry professionals are becoming more relevant for developing, testing, and implementing behavioral health technologies. As the need for such partnerships increases, it is important to understand stakeholders’ attitudes about their role in partnering for developing such technologies and how much do they expect technology to impact behavioral research and care. The aim of this study was to investigate how much technology disruption do stakeholders expect in healthcare, as well as their perceived contribution in partnering for developing behavioral health technologies. Stakeholders (N = 74) responded to an online convenience sampling survey. Over 89% of participants reported expecting that technology will bring at least a moderate amount of disruption in the current models of behavioral healthcare, with respondents with the most experience in digital health expecting the most disruption. As for their perception of each other’s role in partnering for developing behavioral health technologies, one group’s weakness was considered to be complemented by another group’s strength. Academics were perceived as having more theoretical and research expertise but being less technology-savvy, while industry professionals were considered to excel at technological and marketing activities. Providers were considered to have the most clinical and real-world healthcare industry expertise. Our results indicate that technology is expected to disrupt current healthcare models, while also highlighting the need for collaboration, as no single group was considered to have sufficient expertise and resources to develop successful, effective behavioral health technologies on its own. These results may contribute to a better understanding of how technology disruption is affecting behavioral healthcare from the standpoint of its key players, which may lead to better collaborative models of research and care delivery.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, 1468 Madison Ave, New York, NY, 10029, USA

    Madalina Sucala Ph.D.

  2. National Science Foundation, 4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, Virginia, 22230, USA

    Wendy Nilsen Ph.D.

  3. Northwell Health, Great Neck, NY, USA

    Frederick Muench Ph.D.

Authors
  1. Madalina Sucala Ph.D.
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  2. Wendy Nilsen Ph.D.
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  3. Frederick Muench Ph.D.
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Frederick Muench Ph.D..

Additional information

Implications

Policy: Our findings have implications for research policy, shedding light on a topic that is becoming more and more relevant in the behavioral medicine field and catalyzing conversation on developing better collaborative models of research and care delivery.

Research: We believe our study has also has research implications, as understanding stakeholders’ attitudes towards technology, and the need for academia-industry partnerships when employing it in healthcare will contribute to a better understanding of how technology disruption is affecting the behavioral healthcare from the standpoint of its key players.

Practice: The study also has implications for practice, as it will spark debate on practice frameworks that can accommodate and benefit from technology disruption.

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Sucala, M., Nilsen, W. & Muench, F. Building partnerships: a pilot study of stakeholders’ attitudes on technology disruption in behavioral health delivery and research. Behav. Med. Pract. Policy Res. 7, 854–860 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13142-017-0498-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13142-017-0498-9

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