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As brain health investing sees unprecedented growth and activity, how do we ensure a sustainable rate of progress going forward? An editorial in 

reported that “In 2019 alone, venture capital (VC) companies invested a record-breaking $637 million in more than 60 different mental health-oriented companies.”

 This has accelerated further in 2020 and 2021.

 The whole VC field is booming, and beyond just mental health care, investment in the broader field of brain health science and technology is also on the rise.

There is a good reason for this: Brain health technologies are essential clinical tools for addressing the global brain health pandemic and its multiple social and technological changes.

 These technologies—spanning omics, digital therapeutics, artificial intelligence, and devices—aim to improve access, screening, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. There is an increasing convergence of these types of solutions as clinicians, health systems, and payors attempt to simplify clinical workflows and minimize fragmentation of new products and services (

With investment in brain health growing so quickly, it is easy to be optimistic about the current and future state of the field. Recent societal trends reinforce the ostensibly rosy picture. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the destigmatization of mental illnesses and highlighted the importance of brain health to the public.

 Similarly, the pandemic has unveiled as never before intrinsic connections between mental and brain health, economy, innovation, and wellbeing.

 It is crucial, though, that we do not take progress for granted and rest on our laurels. It is also critical that we take a responsible approach to this field, which is very vulnerable to hope (due to the dire suffering and intense want for relief) and hype (due to major business opportunities).

Indeed, the stakes are too high. Given the multi-trillion-dollar costs of mental health disorders, the poor standard of routine care, and the projected rises in prevalence and economic burden of mental health disorders in the coming decades, 

 The show must go on! In order to protect and reinforce the vibrant brain health ecosystem, we must anticipate risks of market failure and work to proactively mitigate them. We wrote about this 

; however, this article is a much more extensive thesis and set of recommendations.

) is a graphical depiction of a common pattern that arises with each new technology or other innovation.

 It represents the maturity, adoption, and social application of specific technologies (

). We believe the Hype Cycle is relevant to the frontier brain health technology field and can provide a cautionary tale for the field.

Risks for the Frontier Brain Health Technology Field

We are seeing signs of “Peak of Inflated Expectations” in this field. There are regular news articles touting the rising rates of VC investment, which have helped create a record number of brain health “unicorn” companies (companies valued over $1 billion).

 Concerns have been raised over the emergence of public disclosure of speculative valuations and seemingly inflated valuations (for instance, the digital therapeutics company Pear Therapeutics achieved a valuation of $1.6 billion with less than $4 million in revenue).

 Many commercially successful technologies have major consumer demand, but are not yet integrated into clinical workflows. There is also a common disconnect between commercially successful apps vs those that are validated and more likely to be accepted in clinical practice guidelines. Some have deemed the digital mental health technology field the “lawless wild west,” citing concerns around false claims and poor data privacy management practices.

 Digital phenotyping has failed to make it into clinical workflows.

Further, there are significant safety concerns from post-marketing safety data of a popular new antidepressant, esketamine.

 Such post-marketing data is often not taken into account in the initial go-to-market excitement. Of course, this data is in and of itself a cautionary tale for the psychedelics field, which has received huge investor interest and public interest.

 Psychedelics in psychiatry to date have no post-marketing data, and no study to date is powered to detect conversion to psychosis. Nonhallucinogenic forms of these molecules may be helpful.

 Taken together, these issues create significant concern for this field’s sustainability.

There is thus a risk that the field will slip into the “Trough of Disillusionment.” This will be disappointing, given that every company failure may represent potentially valuable products and services that will not help patients. Moreover, novel intellectual property will be lost. Much of this downward slide will be driven by conventional VC models that are suboptimal for the brain health technology field. Conventional or general VC models rely on financial executives with minimal to no domain experience. The 2/20 model values financial returns within a set timeframe and disincentivizes significant operational input from general partners (GPs).

 Additionally, strategies prevalent in technology startups may not always transfer well to health care startups (eg, “fake it ‘til you make it,” “move fast and break things,” and Theranos). Problems we observe with conventional VC models are outlined in 

A Brain Health Technology Market Sustainability Grand Strategy

We suggest a grand strategy that could enable the field to bypass the “Trough of Disillusionment” and progress directly to the “Plateau of Productivity.” VC remains a critical component, but we believe it is imperative to consider additional investment, operational, and governance approaches. We outline these approaches to optimize the field’s sustainability in 

To optimize the integrity and legitimacy of brain health technology investing, it is key to develop standards and best practices with major international stakeholders. Examples may include the World Health Organization, the United Nations, and the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD). Engagement with these groups will support sustained engagement with sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, mutual funds, and other large multinational corporations. Moreover, to ensure a global impact, global stakeholders must face the challenges to assure brain health development in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where multiple structural conditions may block progress and sustainability. For example, the October 2021 WHO Mental Health Atlas outlined a global lack of progress in leadership, governance, and financing.

“None of the targets for effective leadership and governance for mental health, provision of mental health services in community-based settings, mental health promotion and prevention, and strengthening of information systems were close to being achieved.

The new UN Health Innovation Exchange is a step in the right direction aiming to connect funders, investors, and innovations. Other progress has recently been made. We 

 that the Sustainability Accounting Standards board included mental health and wellbeing in its proposed updated human capital standards.

 Also, a new ISO standard 45003 gives guidance on managing psychological health and safety risks within an occupational health and safety management system

; the Business Roundtable noted that the generation of a healthy environment is a key purpose of a corporation

; and the signatories of the Principles of Responsible Investing listed mental health as one of the top 4 social issue priorities in the future.

Further, the OECD’s New Approaches to Economic Challenges unit has established a Neuroscience-inspired Policy Initiative that seeks to reconceptualize and revitalize the economy and how it works in new ways, laying the groundwork to identify relevant metrics while building a transdisciplinary network of stakeholders. The initiative will rapidly refine and advance the concept of Brain Capital (a novel asset class grossing up brain health and brain skills) via a series of research projects, surveys, data collection, economic modeling, seminars, and clear policy analyses and recommendations.

Tracking Brain Health Technology Market Sustainability

Tracking metrics on this topic would be useful, given the risks outlined in this article. Metrics of company and market sustainability could offer investors greater ability to make scientifically and data-grounded investments and to ensure the field develops sustainably. However, developing representative metrics of company and market sustainability is challenging in a market where most investments flow into private companies. This precludes the use of typical financial metrics such as free cash flow and yearly revenue. While private companies will disclose data, it is likely that they will only release information that is self-serving and can generate interest from investors and the general public. Further, given the strength of the financial incentives of both limited partners and fund managers, it will be challenging to achieve a more sustainable approach. Financial incentives prioritize force feeding unicorns to maximize exit price and maximizing the share price of public companies. Most likely, metrics will need to be carefully developed by integrating data and judgment in a transparent way, possibly through the tools of multi-criteria decision analysis.

Tracking market sustainability is further challenged by the 

 inherent in a field largely reliant on highly technical advances.

 This enables companies to craft a reductionist and self-serving story of how their products function, a phenomenon exemplified by Theranos. Moreover, many life science companies themselves do not fully understand how their products work, which complicates efforts to overcome the information asymmetry rife in the brain health technology field.

Nonetheless, we believe there are available metrics that could help form an index of company and broader brain health market sustainability. These measures represent outputs that can help investors mitigate the risk of company and broader market failures. 

 outlines such elements that may be included in a proposed brain health market sustainability index.

 recently published a project mapping 50 emerging digital health technologies onto the Hype Cycle.

 We suggest that this type of project should be completed specifically in the brain health technology field, and it should involve surveys of diverse stakeholders from many countries. Then tracking where individuals believe brain health technology map onto the Hype Cycle in a yearly manner would be prudent to guide the field.

In the brain health technology field, there is considerable variability concerning where particular technologies and technology classes sit in the Hype Cycle. Therefore, further work is required to map specific examples onto the cycle. However, irrespective of where these examples stand, formalizing and employing the abovementioned sustainability strategy in the United States, where most investment is currently directed, could mitigate the risk of a broader brain health market failure.

 Of course, we believe our approach should also be deployed proactively outside the United States, especially as global investment begins to increase. We hope that it may even be possible to largely avoid the “Trough of Disillusionment” and reach the “Plateau of Productivity.” We believe our approach could sustain the brain health technology market for decades. Humanity deserves and needs it!

 is an undergraduate studying neuroscience at Dartmouth College. 

 is a director at the PRODEO Institute, an Atlantic Fellow in Brain Health Equity at the Global Brain Health Institute at the University of California, San Francisco, and a Thiel Fellow at Stanford University. 

 is cofounder of the PRODEO Institute and CEO of PRODEO. 

 is Alfred Deakin Professor of Psychiatry at Deakin University and director of IMPACT at Deakin University (Institute for Mental and Physical Health and Clinical Translation). 

 is the director of the Latin American Brain Health Institute, a senior researcher at the Universidad de San Andrés, and a Senior Atlantic Fellow at the GBHI at the UCSF and Trinity College Dublin. 

 is a venture capitalist and an adjunct faculty member at UC Berkeley and Singularity University. 

is a venture capitalist and an adjunct professor in engineering at Stanford University. 

 is a senior clinical advisor for Cohen Veterans Bioscience’s Trauma Research Programs who also serves as strategic advisor co-leading CVB’s Suicide Strategy Initiative. 

 is a corporate attorney, a professor of law at University of Surrey, and an adjunct professor with the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. 

 is venture capitalist, founder and managing partner at Newfund Capital. 

 is an undergraduate studying computer science at Stanford University. 

 is the CEO of Fondation FondaMental and professor of psychiatry at University Paris Est Créteil. 

 is a neurologist, neuroscientist, and technologist. He is an adjunct professor with the Department of Neurology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and co-lead of The BrainHealth Project at the Center for BrainHealth at The University of Texas at Dallas. 

 is senior scientific and technical manager at the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center, where he manages crisis response and resilience project portfolio. 

 is the CEO and president of Cohen Veterans Bioscience. 

 is cofounder of the PRODEO Institute and co-lead of the OECD NIPI, and he holds adjunct roles with IMPACT at Deakin University, GBHI at UCSF, Brain Health Nexus at Cohen Veterans Bioscience, and Baylor College of Medicine. He is a probono strategic advisor to the HEKA Fund (a collaboration of Newfund Capital and FondaMental Fondation).

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New approaches to ensure that the brain health technology sector continues to flourish for decades.

Avoiding a Brain Health Innovation Market Failure: Lessons from the Hype Cycle

Avrim B. Fishkind, MD, discusses prescription digital therapeutics, highlighting one product in particular. He believes these FDA-approved hard- and software will be popping up more and more over the coming years.

has practiced emergency and community psychiatry for the last 25 years. He is a past president of the American Association for Emergency Psychiatry. In 2007, he founded JSA Health Telepsychiatry, one of the nation’s first 24/7 telepsychiatry companies. He is a frequent speaker at the American Psychiatric Association’s conferences on subjects from verbal de-escalation of agitation to digital futures for psychiatrists including telemedicine and prescription digital therapeutics. Dr Fishkind is currently Physician Advisor to Freespira and Chief Clinical Officer of Orbis Health. In his spare time, he races vintage cars and rebuilds vintage audio equipment, and enjoys exploring Houston with his wife and his college age twins.

Here's why the next step in mental health treatment is digital.

Prescription Digital Therapeutics and the Hunger for New Treatments

Alison M. Darcy, PhD, talks about how digital therapeutics for mental health can maximize work with therapists, and what a recent survey reports on the mental health statues of the United States.

is a clinical research psychologist, an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine, and the founder and president of

68% of Americans reported their mental health could be improved. 

Surveying Attitudes Towards Digital Mental Health

 in addiction treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic found that telehealth may increase patient engagement. Investigators also found limited evidence of improved retention rates in telehealth compared with in-person treatment.

The study, conducted by researchers from RTI International and the University of California, Los Angeles, drew on existing research and provider experiences to explore the continued use of telehealth in substance-use disorder treatment after the pandemic. It was published online in

“Telehealth health may allow patients to more easily begin and stay in addiction treatment, which has been a longstanding challenge,” said Tami L. Mark, PhD, MBA, in a press release. Mark is lead author of the study and senior fellow, Behavioral Health Financing and Quality Measurement at RTI International. “However, research is needed to confirm this benefit. As providers pivot to hybrid telehealth models—offering both telehealth and in-person treatment—they need information to help target telehealth to the most appropriate services and patients.”

Mark et al used data collected from a number of sources: a review of the literature, an online survey of 100 California addiction treatment providers, and interviews with 30 California treatment providers and additional stakeholders.

 Although they found potential for patients to be more engaged in treatment due to the easier access and convenience of telehealth, they also explored some of the circumstances in which telehealth may be most appropriate.

In most of the studies included in the literature review, compared with in-person addiction treatment, telehealth was found equally effective in terms of patient retention, treatment satisfaction, substance use, and therapeutic alliance. Three of the studies also found that telehealth can be effective in opioid use disorder medication management. In these studies, patients who received medication management via telehealth also received regular in-person treatment for counseling, drug testing, and other services as needed. In addition, the largest study (N = 3733) reported increased retention for telehealth methadone medication management.

The survey released that most providers reported the most comfort with using telehealth for one-on-one counseling, with 46% saying telehealth was overall equally or more effective than in-person treatment. For medication management, however, 51% of providers reported that telehealth was less effective than in-person treatment, with 33% reporting that telehealth was equally or more effective. The services reported most likely to be provided via telehealth were intensive outpatient (61% of patients), individual counseling (58%), group counseling, and intake assessment (both 52%). The services reported least likely to be provided via telehealth were withdrawal management, methadone intake assessments (both 39% of patients), and drug testing (17%).

In the interviews, participants reported that the relative benefits of telehealth are dependent on the individual patient’s circumstances. They emphasized advantages of telehealth such as the reduced time and cost to patients—particularly those with young children or who have difficulty taking time off or traveling to appointments—and opportunities to observe the patient’s home environments and families. However, participants also acknowledged that in-person treatment may still be preferable for some patients, such as those who are homeless or isolated, those with attention challenges, and those uncomfortable with technology. Similarly, they noted that there may be more challenges in gauging patient progress and providing personal connectedness needed by patients with substance abuse disorders.

“This research underscores the importance of offering telehealth for addiction treatment and the dramatic need to conduct more empirical work to test out the concerns regarding telehealth articulated by agency staff and on surveys,” said Lisa Dixon, MD, MPH, in a press release.

, professor of Psychiatry at the Columbia University Medical Center, director of the Division of Behavioral Health Services and Policy Research within the Department of Psychiatry, and director of the Center for Practice Innovations at New York State Psychiatric Institute.

1. Addiction treatment rose rapidly during pandemic; but potential benefits still unclear. News Release. American Psychiatric Association. October 13, 2021. Accessed October 13, 2021.

https://www.psychiatry.org/newsroom/news-releases/telehealth-addiction-treatment-rose-rapidly-during-pandemic-but-potential-benefits-still-unclear

2. Mark TL, Treiman K, Padwa H, et al. Addiction treatment and telehealth: Review of efficacy and provider insights during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

. October 13, 2021. Accessed October 13, 2021. 

https://ps.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ps.202100088 

Research shows potential for increased patient engagement and limited support for improved retention rates. 

New Study Explores Efficacy of Telehealth in Addiction Treatment 

For the past decade, I have taught 6-hour annual seminars on the history of psychiatry to psychiatric residents. This course was assigned to me, in part, because I have lived through the history of psychiatry for more than 50 years. Through this seminar, my residents and I have come to realize that each generation’s members, ourselves included, look back on earlier psychiatric concepts and practices, from the ancients right through recent times, with a mixture of bemusement, pity, and horror. Our bemusement and pity stem from previous eras’ well-intentioned but quaint or misguided ideas based on scientific ignorance, whereas our horror is evoked by seemingly inhumane practices inflicted on psychiatrically vulnerable populations.

Assuming humans survive and continue doing competent science, we can imagine psychiatrists of the year 2500, enjoying knowledge far more advanced than ours, and reacting to our ideas and practices, too, with bemusement, pity, and horror. From this viewpoint, let us try to envision the history of future psychiatry, to not only guess what might be possible in 2500, but also to imagine how 26th-century psychiatrists might perceive how we think and practice during our psychiatric moments in time.

Overall, we hope that they might view us sympathetically, as trying hard to do good work with what we have, constrained by our limited concepts; by our physics, chemistry, biology, psychological, and social science tools; and by our sociocultural-economic structures. This perspective reminds us that current theories, diagnoses, and methods of assessment, treatment, and prevention are at best temporary placeholders in the arc of psychiatric history, many destined to be replaced within a generation or 2.

Unable to search 2500’s PubMed, we cannot cite the next half-millennium’s scholarly publications. Although we are unable to foresee what are certain to be surprising discoveries, we can future-cast by extending contemporary research and technologies. We can also invoke developments envisioned by today’s keenest scientists.

 From such perspectives, what contemporary psychiatric sacred cows, practices, and professional delusions (or to be kinder, illusions) might 26th-century psychiatrists see as deserving to be thrown into the trash bin of psychiatric history?

In 2500, most of today’s aminergic, cognitive, psychoanalytic, and family process theories are likely to be viewed as 

; 26th-century psychiatry might view our biopsychosocial approach as a good start for an overarching framework, but as generally simplistic in details and understanding.

By 2500, scientists may have clarified the mechanisms and impacts of genetic, epigenetic, and huge varieties of elusive physical and psychosocial environmental forces. We may know how psychobiological processes, from molecular to transpersonal over lifespans, influence psychiatric health. Consequently, models of the mind and brain, coping and adaptation, and family and social function will evolve accordingly. As more nuanced mechanisms are delineated, old theories will drop and new ones will emerge.

In 2500, most of today’s assessment methods will be considered archaic and excessively labor intensive. Predominantly dependent on prolonged self-reported histories elicited face to face, human-to-human psychiatric assessment interviews will be regarded as inefficient, incomplete, and remarkably error-prone, faulted for being susceptible to ubiquitous and influential 

By 2500, such biases will have been (hopefully) largely eliminated with the use of artificial intelligence (AI)–assisted assessment tools. Human assessors will come into play only after initial screening assessments have been completed. Constantly refined over years, mechanisms for obtaining dynamical biopsychosocial fingerprints might produce highly nuanced and individualized 

 Starting with genomic and epigenomic analyses in utero (“You on a Chip”),

 such fingerprints will utilize massive data stores, integrating information about neurobiology, temperament, coping styles, personality, and life events derived from individual, family, school, social connection, AI usage, and other registry sources. To all this might be added information from responses to individualized, virtual reality–based scenario simulations and from high-definition, whole-brain, dynamic scans assessing connectivity among numerous interacting brain regions. Each fingerprint will be compared with those of billions of individuals going back for generations.

In 2500, most of today’s psychiatric diagnoses as compiled in DSM-5 will be viewed as primitive, superficial descriptions at best, on par with antiquated terms like rubor, calor, and dolor, or perhaps pneumonia in general medicine.

By 2500, psychiatric diagnoses might be calculated along lines of precision psychiatry, encompassing individuals’ cell-specific diagnoses, brain functional neuroanatomy and connectivity patterns, interpersonal interactions, life events, and appraisals of deviant behaviors, all contextualized within patients’ micro- and macro-cultural frameworks. What we now call multiple comorbidities and varieties of major psychiatric disorders will be cast as highly elaborated and differentiated 

 These patterns might calculate patients’ stress–vulnerability balances and psychological reserves, indicate warning signs and risks, and predict the likelihood of a specific patient erupting in an episode of suicide or violence.

By 2500, virtually all of today’s psychiatric medication, somatic, and psychotherapeutic treatments will be viewed as archaic. Psychiatrists in 2500 will shudder at the hit-or-miss application and modest effectiveness of our biological and psychotherapeutic interventions as well as their many adverse effects.

 They will find it hard to understand why clinicians in the early 21st century permitted patients with substantial psychic pain related to psychosis, depression, and cravings to suffer for days and weeks before being administered substantial relief.

 They will feel sorry that patients had to waste so much time in ineffective treatments (in addition to traveling to and from these treatments) and endure years of poor quality of life.

By the year 2500, psychiatric patients might access a host of wearable and implantable devices that both monitor ongoing status and administer experiential (eg, educational, interactive, psychotherapeutic) and direct biological interventions.

For reasons of efficiency and effectiveness, AI-based personalized robots (robotherapeutic i-BOTs

) treatments might prevail. I-BOTs could provide social support and companionship on one hand, and, on the other, train patients to develop more effective social skills with specific individuals, individuals in general, and groups. Based on moment-to-moment data from personalized smartphones and auditory-visual-physiological sensors, these devices might detect when individuals experience difficulties and initiate first-order personal coaching, which might up-regulate to personalized psychotherapies. When i-BOTS sense that their resources are insufficient to adequately manage difficulties, they might signal a need for higher-level services to the patient’s personal health concierge, formerly known as a primary care clinician, for triage to higher levels of care, including human clinicians, who can (as it were) think outside the BOT.

By means of i-SIM therapeutics and virtual reality–based games, which could use holographic avatars to reenact earlier life events and current stressful interpersonal or other toxic environments, patients might learn to overcome fears, fixations, deficient emotional regulatory capacities, and other challenges.

For interventions requiring biologicals, the psychiatrists of 2500 may be able to tailor everything from medication types and dosing schedules to delivery systems and routes of administration, basing them on patient-centered analyses using genes, epigenetic patterns, brain circuitry, microbiomes, and psychosocial factors.

Neurostimulatory interventions might feature stereotactic membrane–like skullcaps, capable of focusing deep ultrasound and other noninvasive stimuli at precise targets to promote local neogenesis.

 Optogenetic-guided retroviral interventions might enhance and sculpt specific brain nuclei and connection pathways.

 Umpteenth-generation CRISPR-like genetic interventions might reverse neuropathological processes associated with excessive pruning, dysregulated emotional and attentional centers, impulsivity, habit formation, and craving.

 Anti-neuroinflammatory agents and neuroplaque removers might inhibit and reverse degenerative and other psychiatric diseases,

 while individualized biomic brews might enhance healthier microbiomes.

Since unrelenting psychic pain in anxiety, mood, psychotic, and other disorders can activate and kindle terrifying, auto-traumatizing memory patterns (further augmenting posttraumatic stress disorder), patients in extreme psychic pain might be treated with psych-anesthetics. These agents might acutely alleviate psych-aches and induce therapeutic sleep, during which neurogenerative treatments might be applied.

With respect to treatment settings, few ambulatory patients will travel to clinicians’ offices or treatment centers, as virtually all interventions will be amenable to remote administration via teletreatment.

 Who would want to spend hours traveling to and from clinicians’ offices when 3-D telemedicine permits individual, tele-family, and tele-group therapy, even with participants in different locations, time zones, and continents?

When necessary, individuals who are highly disturbed will still be treated in specialized sanctuary-like medical treatment centers, usually for brief periods of time. Thanks to thorough assessments and deep data mining, extremely accurate assessments of needs and risks should be available for comprehensive discharge planning.

For socialization, education, training, and rehabilitation purposes, actual live human gatherings are likely to endure, as they have for many centuries.

In 2500, psychiatrists will view the early 21st century as virtually devoid of meaningful efforts to prevent psychiatric disorders. They will see that even when risk factors were well known and identified, few public health efforts were designed to minimize subsequent emergence of psychiatrist disorders.

By 2500 (with hopefully few biases), public health programs might identify and conduct more intensive assessments of high-risk neighborhoods, individuals, and families, and better provide indicated social and individual-based interventions. Thanks to immediate diagnoses of new pregnancies—and based on intrauterine genome and epigenetic scans as well as prenatal neurotemperamental assessments—precision interventions could assist with repairs based on advanced gene- and epigene-manipulation techniques, while other individually tailored preventive interventions may also be implemented.

In 2500, psychiatrists will find many of our contemporary practices for training, certifying, and recertifying psychiatrists to be laughable. They may appreciate that the quasi-apprentice model was probably the best that could be achieved under current circumstances. They will also note that, although well intended, cumbersome administrative superstructures required that practitioners, academic faculty, trainees, and staff waste huge amounts of time in mind-numbing educational training and assessment rituals of unproven worth. They will further note that many tedious rituals revolved around scheduling, electronic medical records, charting, billing, ineffective meetings, and other time- and energy-swallowing administrative activities.

By 2500, based on increasingly effective and evidence-based learning methods, psychiatric training will utilize large numbers of simulators that will challenge, train, and meticulously assess trainees’ competencies in handling nuanced scenarios. Carefully constructed games will assess clinical decision-making and practice skills, knowledge, professionalism, communication, and systems-based care, each tailored for specific environments in which the clinicians serve. Certifications for specific necessary skills will be fluidly conducted, with in-house, on-the-job, and just-in-time learning, training and certification, renewable as new techniques and situations arise. Medical record keeping and other administrative functions will largely be allocated to natural language, administratively coded robo-scribes. These AI devices might also summarize and bring clinicians’ attention to salient portions of patients’ medical information before their scheduled encounters.

What will psychiatric practice look like in the future?

Digital Therapeutics

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New Study Explores Efficacy of Telehealth in Addiction Treatment

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