“Getting Grounded” – Lessons learned from Kaiser Permanente’s patients and clinicians as we stand up an ecosystem of digital emotional health and wellness tools

Kaiser Permanente (KP) cares for over 12.2 million members reflecting the diversity of the US population. Our internal estimates indicate that 20-25% of our members who seek care in Specialty Behavioral Health are sub-clinical, with no clinical diagnosis of depression, anxiety or a related mental health condition. We know that these members, and many more who may not be seeking support from their health plan or care providers, face some form of emotional and mental distress and have needs. Our system and our providers often do not have tools and resources for this subclinical population for which traditional solutions – therapy, group visits, and medication, are often not appropriate or not desirable.  We began an innovation effort in 2016 to better understand what our members want and need, how our clinicians are currently addressing these issues, and how other systems are responding to these needs. Our goal was to develop more convenient options to support emotional health and wellness across our entire health care delivery system.

In this session, we will share key insights from our journey to stand up an ecosystem for emotional health and wellness with digital therapeutics in multiple care settings and ‘self-serve’ access to these tools and resources on our patient facing portal. We will also share our learnings on the application of human centered design to mental health, our preliminary data and insights on the development of a digital therapeutic formulary for emotional health and wellness and key takeaways we have so far on what it takes to integrate these tools across clinical pathways.

• Estee Neuwirth, PhD, Sr. Director of Innovation and Design, Kaiser Permanente
• Trina Histon, PhD, Senior Principal Consultant, Prevention, Wellness & Digital Health, Care Management Institute, Kaiser Permanente
• Chris Browning, Experience Design Strategist, The Design Consultancy, Kaiser Permanente