Emergency healthcare professionals at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital will soon have access to a new mental health platform that can monitor their levels of well-being and detect changes in real-time.

WHY IT MATTERS
The platform and accompanying mobile app are developed by Baltimore-based technology startup Rose, which has its roots at Johns Hopkins University. The HIPAA-compliant platform collects information from users in the form of questionnaires and journal entries, and uses that data to track mental health, monitor stress levels, identify triggers and get ahead of more extreme events, according to the company.

Drs. Hanni Stoklosa and Desiree Azizoddin of Brigham and Women's Hospital's Department of Emergency Medicine led the request for a digital platform to support clinicians in the ED, with help from iHub Partners Digital Health.

"The committee on wellness in the Brigham's Department of Emergency Medicine is acutely aware of and prepared to support the clinicians who loyally care for patients during this COVID-19 pandemic," said Stoklosa in a statement.

THE LARGER TREND
The artificial intelligence and natural language processing that power the Rose platform enable the technology to spot key indicators and warning markers for the presence or advancement of mental health symptoms in a user's responses to questions and prompts. Rose can detect early warning signs of numerous mental health conditions, including anxiety, depression and trauma.

The platform also gives users a tailored feed of content from its library of more than 1,000 articles and videos, based on the user's history, behavior and app inputs.

Clinician burnout has long been a major challenge for healthcare, of course. Challenges with EHR usability are only part of it. Crushing workloads and emotional exhaustion are an epidemic across hospitals in the U.S., and that toll has been severely exacerbated by the ongoing pandemic.

"With more than 5 million confirmed COVID-19 cases in the U.S., many hospitals are overloaded with patients with no end in sight," said Kavi Misri, founder and CEO of Rose. "The toll this pandemic has taken on the mental and emotional health of front-line workers cannot be overlooked. They are experiencing an unprecedented number of patients, cases, deaths, and risks to their own health, all of which exacts a heavy toll on their mental state. We simply can't ignore this emerging crisis that threatens the mental health and stability of our essential workers – they need support."

ON THE RECORD
"Rather than fragmented tools and programs aiming to 'treat burnout,' we need to better identify and tackle system-wide factors that lead to burnout, while promoting a healthy workplace for our healthcare workers," said Dr. John Shivdat, Rose advisor and chairman and medical director of HCA Coliseum Health System in Georgia. "Rose is tailor-made to address this challenge – proactively identifying individuals who are at greater risk of burnout and customizing interventions and content to their unique needs, while providing mental health professionals with the data and insights necessary to deliver personalized content more efficiently and effectively."

Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN
Email the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com

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