---
id: "coronavirus-smarter-crowdsourcing:recommendations/data-and-technology"
type: "GovLab policy recommendation"
title: "Data and Technology"
url: "https://coronavirus.smartercrowdsourcing.org/recommendations/data-and-technology"
summary: "Use digital technologies and data to and expand access to mental health services and improve service delivery."
source: "The GovLab (coronavirus.smartercrowdsourcing.org)"
licence: "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)"
---

# Data and Technology

Use digital technologies and data to and expand access to mental health services and improve service delivery.

- Part of: [Smarter Crowdsourcing in the Age of Coronavirus](https://coronavirus.smartercrowdsourcing.org/), [all recommendations](https://coronavirus.smartercrowdsourcing.org/recommendations)

## Strategy 1

Use technology to bridge access gaps and reach individuals who cannot access treatment due to cost,location,language,or other barriers.

- Timeframe: 1-3 Months (immediate)
- Audience: Private Sector, Academia, Civil Society, Vulnerable Populations, Healthcare Providers, Organized Civil Society, Nonprofits
- Type: Technology/Innovation, Communications, Procurement/Logistics
- Strategy page: https://coronavirus.smartercrowdsourcing.org/strategies/use-technology-to-bridge-access-gaps-and-reach-ind

### Actions governments should take (strategy 1)

1. Use technology to augment existing processes and procedures, rather than creating digital first replacements from scratch.
2. Analyze what processes and tools already exist and how they can be adapted and strengthened with technology. Use the existing technology, equipment and tools specifically in the LAC context, and reinforce them with technology.
3. Adapt existing telemedicine or other medical care practices for mental health, with an approach that mental health disorders --- especially the more common ones -- can be for a large part approached as most other medical conditions and have evidence based treatments that work for a large part of patients.
4. Ensure that investments in technology to provide better mental health services focus on the care providers offer, not only on the tech they use to do so. Focusing on particular platforms or software may result in suboptimal tech that doesn’t fit the use case. Focus on the goals providers want to achieve, and then identify the technologies that can best achieve them.
5. Ensure that investments in new technologies to support mental health services are accompanied with underlying investments in the service provision itself, including governance, training, operations, funding, and workforce development. Technologies are useless unless people know how to use them both as providers and users.
6. Create and staff a mental health telephone hotline. Ensure that the telephone hotline is offered in various languages and is staffed by providers trained on cultural competencies and contexts of the targeted populations.
7. Promote the widespread use of video sessions and telemedicine to allow providers to work with patients remotely.
8. Consider waivers that would enable the use of video conferencing or video chat technologies for mental health care services.
9. Create cost sharing arrangements for proprietary technologies or endorse open source technologies, apps, or platforms that providers can use with existing or new patients without having to themselves invest heavily in new capital costs.
10. Partner with 3rd party vendors (like digital mental health apps such as [headspace](https://www.headspace.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=1919439341&utm_content=68065219102&utm_term=409649586657&headspace&gclid=CjwKCAiA7939BRBMEiwA-hX5J_ELhZInSt8LaAdKqFk9K7-IusjH0KOmhmhq_1ianGvvMWfCSk970BoC3t0QAvD_BwE) and [calm](https://www.calm.com/)) to distribute reduced cost or free apps and digitied services that patients and individuals can use asynchronously and independently.
11. Create specific interventions for rural populations by providing facilitative technologies like phone lines, broadband connections, smartphones and telehealth services. Couple technology provision with training on how to use those technologies.
12. Monitor for inequities in engagement with new technologies across groups with limited access to smartphones or the internet.
13. [Invest in and promote the use of technologies like smart paper, phone apps, SMS surveys, that can be used by minimally trained/skilled workers to collect data and report it into open source or centralized platforms.](https://shifo.org/en/solution/)
14. Invest in technologies that help reduce wait times and scheduling issues.

### Examples from around the world (strategy 1)

1. [AI for Good](https://www.aiforgood.co.uk/) - a company that uses ethical technology and AI-powered solutions to address social issues - released [rAInbow](https://www.hirainbow.org/) in 2018. [rAInbow](https://www.hirainbow.org/) is a chatbot that helps users understand their relationships, what is healthy and what is not. It also provides resources that users can access to get more support. Nearly 20,000 unique users have interacted with this chatbot.

## Strategy 2

Improve mental health data collection and use through technologies

- Timeframe: 3-6 Months (medium)
- Audience: Healthcare Providers
- Type: Data, Technology/Innovation, Capacity Building
- Strategy page: https://coronavirus.smartercrowdsourcing.org/strategies/improve-mental-health-data-collection-and-use-thro

### Actions governments should take (strategy 2)

1. [Invest in and promote the use of technologies like smart paper, phone apps, SMS surveys, that can be used by minimally trained/skilled workers to collect data and report it into open source or centralized platforms.](https://shifo.org/en/solution/)
2. Digitize mental health screenings by transitioning paper process to digital formats on tablets or smartphones
3. Develop an app for managing and tracking patients exercise, habits, and use of prescribed medications.
4. [Consider how different digital platforms like websites, smartphone apps, SMS, telephone hotlines or smart paper forms can be used to support data collection for mental health or behavioral health conditions.](https://shifo.org/en/solution/)
5. Consider ways to allow patients to report symptoms or conditions at regular intervals (e.g. every day, week, etc.), by setting alerts or reminders.
6. Consider ways to crowdsource data collection through the internet or smartphones, for example, by creating a means where individuals can flag associates that may be suffering from depression, suicidal ideation or who may be victims of domestic abuse.
7. Ensure that platforms that collect patient data offers concrete guidance, resources, and advice for what an individual should do given her/his reported symptoms (e.g. if you are thinking of hurting yourself call “XXX-XXXX”)

### Examples from around the world (strategy 2)

1. [A smartphone application called MONARCA, allows the collection of data on bipolar disorder by allowing patients to self-monitor symptoms of bipolar disorder and to connect through an interactive feedback loop with clinicians.](https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/3/7/e003353.long)