One of the biggest challenges for people living with chronic conditions is battling depression and other behavioral health issues that have the potential to undermine their overall health and increase healthcare costs. A lack of access to behavioral health professionals is also a widespread issue.
The Office of the National Coordinator sees mobile apps as having the potential to help people manage behavioral health and substance abuse problems. It’s looking for behavioral health apps to highlight at the Technology Innovations for Substance Abuse and Mental Health Disorders Conference at the White House next month. A first place winner and two runners up will be chosen by a group of judges.
The intent of the challenge is to identify and highlight existing innovative technologies that use evidence-based strategies to empower consumer self-management of behavioral health disorders, according to the ONC’s website.
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Submissions will be evaluated using criteria such as application usability, including intuitiveness, capacity to engage the user, comprehensiveness of the technology for addressing the behavioral health needs of the target population and the ability to be integrated with electronic health records and personal health records.
The winners will be invited to demo their tools in person at the conference or remotely if they can’t travel on their own dime. The selected apps will also be included in a behavioral health technology innovations website developed by the National Institutes of Health in connection with the conference.
The deadline for submissions is September 3. Click here to register.
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