Student Interview:
Student Interview Transcription
Expert Interview Prelude: The expert interview below is with a cardiologist, and one that does not specifically treat college students either. Now, you may be wondering what the relevance of this interview is, and that’s perfectly understandable and explainable. The thought process here was to gain insights into the status of digital health services outside of the mental health sphere to see if any tips or tricks could be extracted and translated in such a way that they could help improve the offering of digital mental health services. Additionally, the hospital at which this cardiologist works has been offering digital consultations consistently ever since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, whereas the University of Michigan only partnered with Uwill in March of 2023, so there could be some insights to gain with the vast experiences this cardiologist has with telehealth.
Expert Interview Prelude Audio:
Expert Interview:
Expert Interview Transcription
Personal Insights on the Expert Interview: My main takeaway from the expert interview is that access hacking to mitigate the downsides of digital mental health services is possible. For some background, in the student interview, the topic of the counselor being unable to fully observe the student’s body language because of the camera being fixated on the upper chest and above or because of the consultation being over the phone was brought up. This could prevent quality care from being administered or could hide important things from a counselor that they would typically observe in an in-person consultation, and thus the care process could be drastically slowed down or even derailed. Thus, the question became whether there would be a way to access hack the problem—a way to make the patient more accessible to the mental health care provider. In the expert interview, I asked Dr. Ananthasubramaniam whether there were any technological devices created to mitigate the downside of telehealth consultations: the inability to physically examine the patient. When he responded yes, I took the opportunity to ask him whether these devices actually worked and whether they provided accurate data in attempt to determine whether these devices fit the “dongle” criteria. I was pleased to hear that the devices actually did work and existing data indicates that these devices produce accurate readings, which leads me to my main takeaway. If, for a specialty such as cardiology that requires intricate, technical physical examinations of the heartbeat, etc., technological devices can be created to circumvent the issue of not being able to be in the same room as the patient, then technological devices can certainly be created to assist mental health counselors and therapists to better read and observe the body language of their patients during digital mental health consultations. The imagined future for mental health services and, more generally, all health consultations is thus digital. Digitize the services, create technology to mitigate the downsides, and repeat the process indefinitely. The process is indefinite because access has no endpoint. Accessibility is not a box to check off. Accessibility is a fundamental criterion to design, and as long as accessibility is at the nucleus of the design process, digitization is the solution to an accessible future.
Personal Insights on the Expert Interview Audio:
