Editorial: Dissemination, implementation and uptake of digital interventions in practice
This editorial introduces a special collection on how digital mental health interventions move from research into clinical practice. It frames the key questions: why does uptake remain low despite a strong evidence base, what implementation barriers matter most, and what research designs can help bridge the gap? A useful orientation piece for clinicians, researchers, and policy makers engaging with the implementation science of digital health.
Abstract
The effectiveness of a wide range of digital interventions, like guided self-help interventions, has been well established for common mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety. In highly controlled research studies, these interventions have a substantial impact, leading to both decreases in participants’ symptoms, as well as improvements in their quality of life. Similar effects are also increasingly being reported in routine clinical practice. In general, guidance by mental healthcare professionals allows for sufficiently high adherence and limits drop-out which are key to maximise the potential of these interventions. Research has in the past already focused on how digital interventions are both perceived, as well as received by end-users and on the effective implementation of such interventions. Although initial studies were primarily observational, i.e., describing implementation problems and barriers, research in recent years has also increasingly started to focus on developing and testing strategies to overcome these. However, due to the applied nature and complex settings in which these studies take place, this remains particularly challenging, especially when it comes to measuring these processes and outcomes. The current Research Topic focuses on this developing domain of implementation science and encompasses two topics related to digital interventions: attitudes and acceptance of end-users and routine care implementation.
Keywords: implementation, dissemination, digital mental health, uptake, practice
Read more
Reference
Van Daele, T., Vis, C., Van Assche, E., & Riper, H. (2024). Editorial: Dissemination, implementation and uptake of digital and technological interventions in practice. Frontiers in Digital Health, 5, 1349545. https://doi.org/10.3389/fdgth.2023.1349545