Intersession Management and Remote Therapeutic Intervention Support

Dear Colleagues,

Many studies have confirmed that therapeutic interventions constitute a fundamental part of most therapies as they increase their efficacy. The variety of therapeutic interventions, in turn, ranges from simple medication intakes up to complex behavioral therapies including homework, which is assigned by a therapist to the patient. In particular, homework supports therapeutic progress and helps to transfer therapeutic achievements from the clinical setting to the real-life situation of the patient at home. Taking this diversity into account, many therapists crave for a more sophisticated IT support. In line with this trend, recent studies revealed that (1) utilizing smart mobile devices are demanded by therapists and (2) that they can be used to obtain new insights in clinical research. However, existing approaches still come with several drawbacks. First, they mainly provide specifically tailored applications and often do not cope with the diversity of therapeutic interventions. Second, they neither consider the execution context of homework properly nor the provision of feedback. Third, existing solutions focus on the therapist-patient relationship and, therefore, neglect emerging opportunities (e.g., context-sensitive data) in this context.  Fourth, features provided by current smart mobile devices (e.g., sensors) have seldomly been used for therapeutic interventions. More generally, the development of information systems, which support homework in the context of therapeutic interventions and intersession management has not been sufficiently addressed so far. When realizing information systems that integrate, for example, smart mobile devices, the common procedure of therapeutic interventions in general and homework in particular must be carefully captured by the system. Therefore, relevant requirements must be elicited in real-world projects. Based on such requirements, new IT platform approaches enabling therapists to manage therapeutic interventions remotely can be designed and realized. Using such platforms, homework can be created, for example, with a web-based component and be performed by patients with the help of, for example, smart mobile devices. Moreover, beyond the technical issues when capturing remote therapeutic interventions and intersession management digitally, many interdisciplinary questions arise, which need to be addressed. For example, what about ethical aspects, privacy issues, or evolving demands of therapists.  Therefore, the aim of this special issue is the investigation of challenges, opportunities, and new questions when addressing intersession management and remote therapeutic interventions by adding IT-support to these environments. To be more precise, the following research questions, inter alia, shall be addressed by this Special Issue:

• What are the drawbacks and limitations of IT-supported therapeutic interventions?
• What means sensor usage in this context?
• Can we derive new insights into the performance of intersession management and remote therapeutic interventions?
• What are the general risks of IT-support in this context?
• What means context-awareness in this environment?
• What constitutes a suitable IT-support in this context?
• Which new medical issues arise?
• Which new psychological issues arise?
• What are the demands of therapists?
• What are the demands of patients?
• What about legal and ethical aspects in this context?
• What means feedback in this context?
• What means data quality in this context?
• What are the core features of a comprehensive IT-supported intersession management?

This Special Issue aims to provide a comprehensive overview of new approaches and disruptive ideas for an IT-Support of intersession management and remote therapeutic interventions. We invite research articles that will consolidate our understanding of the state-of-the-art in this area. The Special Issue will publish full research, review, and highly rated manuscripts addressing the above issues, including any of the topics mentioned in the keywords listed below.

Dr. Rüdiger Pryss
PD Dr. Winfried Schlee
Prof. Dr. Harald Baumeister
Dr. Patrick Neff
Prof. Dr. Thomas Probst
Guest Editors

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• Mobile Interventions
• Internet Interventions
• Mobile Therapy
• Internet Therapy
• Therapeutic Home
• Intersession Management
• Remote Therapy
• IT-supported Therapies
• Sensors
• Ecological Momentary Assessment
• Therapy Monitoring
• Ad-hoc Therapy Feedback
• IT-supported Therapy Feedback
• Legal Aspects
• Ethical Aspects