The Potential of Digital Therapeutics to Deliver Guideline Psychological Care at Population Scale
Monday, November 20, 2023
Coline Espie, PhD, DSc
Professor of Sleep Medicine
Oxford University
About the Webinar:
According to international clinical guidelines there are two similarly evidence-based approaches to treating common mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, and insomnia. These are pharmacotherapeutics and cognitive and behavioural therapeutics (CBTx). In practice however, only pharmacotherapy is available at population scale, the dissemination of CBTx being limited by the availability of clinicians and therapists to see the huge numbers of patients who might need or prefer psychological treatment. The advent of digital CBTx / digital therapeutics however offers a ‘transporter system’ which, like oral medication, is intrinsically scalable. Provided digital therapeutics are developed, refined, and rigorously tested, like any other putative treatment, there is potential to close a long-standing gap in service provision, with an ecosystem of psychological care equivalent in scope to pharmacotherapy.
About Colin Espie:
Colin Espie is the Professor of Sleep Medicine in the Sir Jules Thorne Sleep & Circadian Neurosciences Institute, University of Oxford; Founding Director of the Oxford Experimental & Clinical Sleep Medicine research programme; and Clinical Director of the Oxford Course in Sleep Medicine. He is affiliated with the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, a Senior Research Fellow at Somerville College, and a Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Psychiatry. He is an Emeritus Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Glasgow. He is internationally known for his work on insomnia and its treatment using cognitive behavioural therapeutics (CBTx), has published over 300 scientific papers and several textbooks, is Deputy Editor of Journal of Sleep Research, and serves on the editorial board of Sleep Medicine Reviews. He was awarded the Mary A. Carskadon Outstanding Educator Award by the Sleep Research Society (2017) and the Peter Hauri Lifetime Scientific Achievement Award by the Society of Behavioral Sleep Medicine (2021). Colin is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, the Academy of Medical Sciences, and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, and an Honorary Fellow of the BABCP (British Association for Behavioural & Cognitive Psychotherapies) and of the Royal College of General Practitioners. Colin is actively involved in print, TV, and social media regarding the science of sleep (twitter.com/ProfEspie). He also co-founded https://www.bighealth.com/ the developer of SleepioTM which is now widely available in the NHS-UK and in the US healthcare system. More about Colin Espie.