The app ecosystem is packed with millions of pieces of portable software, a small but significant group of which aims to address mental health issues. For a long time, regulators took a hands-off approach to overseeing these applications, but now the UK has robust rules in place to provide end users with a higher-quality experience and to ensure accountability for developers.
It’s a good starting point, although experts believe there’s still more to do. Here’s a look at why post-treatment monitoring sits at the forefront of improving the effectiveness of mental health apps.
Increased Oversight
Empowering people with information is the job of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), and its latest guidance sets out with the specific goal of helping the public and professionals alike to determine whether a particular piece of mental health technology is effective. In turn, apps in this space must meet minimum safety standards and display either a CE or UKCA mark, and must also be searchable on the MHRA’s register of approved tools.
Moreover, additional reporting powers have been introduced under the Yellow Card Scheme, allowing any user to flag issues encountered in an app and expect a regulatory response. In other words, what was once an unregulated Wild West is being civilised.
Calls for Holistic Assessment
While the MHRA’s new guidance is welcome, many see it as a step on a longer journey toward better regulation of mental health tech and treatments in the UK. From here, it’s argued that post-treatment monitoring must be factored in to determine the effectiveness and impact of tools, providing a broader assessment of whether they live up to claims.
For instance, if a patient has been recommended for ketamine detox and also uses a mental health app after completing the clinical treatment for their addiction issues, current regulatory standards might not capture the full picture of whether or not the software adequately met their needs. Rolling in relapse prevention as part of apps designed with post-treatment support in mind must be a priority in this context.
Likewise, there’s a need to ensure human practitioners are not sidelined in the rush to recommend a purely app-based path to recovery. Monitoring risks and tracking treatment outcomes can be automated to a greater degree than ever before, but the potential for flashpoints to be missed cannot be ignored.
The Privacy Talking Point
The last kink in mental health app usage in a post-treatment scenario relates to data privacy. Patients provide vast amounts of personal information to tech in this niche, leaving themselves at the mercy of a range of cyber threats. Developers must be held to the highest security standards, and regulators like the MHRA must be proactive in enforcing them.
So, mental health app users and healthcare practitioners can now be more confident that the tech they’re using lives up to any claims of effectiveness, but there’s still more to be done in terms of regulating it. Post-treatment monitoring provides one answer, so long as humans are not cut out of the support provision process.
