5 Ways Clinical Science Can Advance Your Digital Health Product
Traditionally clinical science has been less integrated into behavioral health product development, but there’s a growing recognition of the pivotal role clinicians should play in this sphere. Below are five ways that clinical science can significantly contribute to bridge this gap to not only increase access to mental health care, but elevate the quality, engagement, and effectiveness of these digital mental health products to increase equitable access to care.
5 Ways Clinical Science Can Advance Your Digital Behavioral Health Product.
1.The SME (Subject Matter Expert) can constrain your problem space, saving the product team time and money. When we’re talking about the advancement of mental health, clinical scientists have a deep knowledge of the problem space. We can help constrain the problem space and help identify the high value-add gaps for product teams to focus on solving. We understand evidence based treatments: both the benefits and limitations. We understand the clinical adaptations and how needs and treatments are refined based on different patient demographics, family dynamics, and environmental contexts. That means we can reduce the time spent on discovery and focus on the areas that extend beyond our area of expertise (e.g., community co-design for individuals who were not represented in evidence based treatments or have ever attended therapy).
2. The Safety can ensure the product is designed with potential risk in mind, to eliminate late-stage thrash and ultimately provide faster regulatory sign-off for the end product. Product teams have engineers, designers, and product managers highly equipped at identifying edge cases from their respective areas of expertise. We too are highly adept at identifying edge cases from the clinical, ethical, or regulatory areas of expertise. This role is oftentimes seen as the “naysayer” in product teams. However, this doesn’t need to be the case. The goal of “the safety” is the same as the other product members: identify the potential risk early and build to eliminate, manage, or reduce risk. The earlier we’re incorporated, the easier it is to flag an issue before cross-functional time and resourcing has been spent.
3. The Evaluator can ensure the product is optimally designed to evaluate its success. Ultimately a product needs to demonstrate success, whatever that definition of success is for that product. Thinking of evaluation of the product after it’s built is a risky decision. You may have an incredible product, but if you can’t demonstrate that value-add in concrete numbers, because it wasn’t designed to measure those metrics, then your product may be dead in the water. Clinical science is well versed in intervention design and evaluation. If brought in early to identify what success would mean for the product (and for whom), we can collaborate with product teams to ensure key features that are required for measuring success are incorporated into the product design.
4. The Engager can identify opportunities to improve existing products. Similar to the point above, it doesn’t matter how wonderful the product may be if it’s not used, because then it doesn’t matter. That said, not all usage is created equal when we think of improving outcomes. Beyond mere usage, clinical science can collaborate with product teams to gauge meaningful engagement patterns. We can help bridge the gap between analytical engagement data and the clinical understanding of why engagement may fluctuate or potential risk areas of engagement based on the clinical content presented. As the field evolves, there is also an appreciation for the individual differences in amount and type of meaningful engagement a user needs for improved outcomes (i.e., ending an intervention early is not always a bad sign). Ideally, product teams need to work toward understanding this nuanced pattern of engagement and clinical science can help.
5. The Innovator can provide a holistic perspective to identify key gaps with high potential value. Digital health shouldn’t merely replicate traditional face-to-face treatments — it offers a unique opportunity to enhance and transform behavioral health. Clinical scientists possess the ability to navigate both the intricate details of existing methodologies and the broader landscape of the problem space, discerning not just what’s been done, but also what’s missing. In fact, as PhD’s, our training explicitly emphasizes the development and testing of original concepts based on identified gaps: contributing to the evidence-base we seek to reference. With a deep understanding of implementation science, clinical populations, and treatments, our skillset extends beyond translating others’ research, to actively creating new interventions and insights. By examining the problem space from various angles, we can uncover opportunities that blend evidence-based treatments with digital innovations.
In summary, it’s a critical time to demonstrate success for many digital behavioral health companies and the problem space is inherently complicated. The collaboration between clinical scientists and product teams is pivotal for developing successful digital behavioral health solutions. Each brings specialized expertise crucial for crafting effective solutions. Just as leveraging various engineering skills enhances a product, harnessing diverse domains within clinical science elevates the potential of digital behavioral health products success.
