Have you ever used a content management system (CMS)? What possibilities does a CMS offer for your treatment and what does the application actually look like in practice? Dr. Mandy Roy is a private lecturer and senior physician at the Asklepios clinic Nord Ochsenzoll. She has developed her own online module for her autism outpatient clinic, created within the Minddistrict CMS. In an interview, she talks about her experience and reports on how patients accept ehealth in the daily routines within the clinic.
Photo: PD Dr. Mandy Roy
Every healthcare facility has its own idea of treatment and counselling. Digital tools can be used to provide care that is as personalised and tailored to the patient as possible – and many professionals have already decided to adopt ehealth services and use them in psychiatric care. Amongst them also private lecturer Dr. Mandy Roy.
She sees the advantages in using ehealth tools, such as online modules or questionnaires, as part of her work at the Asklepios clinic Nord Ochsenzoll. As senior physician, she is responsible for the autism outpatient clinic, among other things. “I find it incredibly enriching, I have to say. We only ever have a limited amount of time for our patients [...].” With usually only one hour of therapeutic work per week, online applications can offer people undergoing treatment the opportunity to tackle other topics or tasks. These can then be worked on at their own pace in therapy-free time or can be discussed with the professional, Dr. Roy explains further.
Developing a new module
There are numerous tools and interventions that are already available to professionals in Minddistrict and can be used immediately in therapeutic work. But sometimes you might need something more – for example, content that is really tailored to your own organisation and patients.
“I was able to incorporate my expertise into this module.”
Dr. Roy particularly noticed a shortage of interventions for autism, which inspired her to develop her own module for autism patients and put it together with the help of the Minddistrict CMS. “I’ve been working with adult autism patients for many years and have found almost nothing online,” she explains. “And that was one reason why I said, ‘It’s great if I can widen the scope and provide many patients – including some that I may not be able to treat myself in therapy – with something that they can benefit from’.”
“Of course, I have somehow learnt over the years what is important for these patients,” Dr. Roy continues. “As a result, I was able to incorporate my expertise into this module and design it completely according to my own wishes, as I think it is best for the patients.”
Possible even without prior knowledge
After being inspired, the next step was to create the content for this module. “It had actually been a bit of a dream of mine for a long time to do something like this myself. But I never really had an idea of how to go about it. Then, when I had the opportunity to do it with Minddistrict, it was really fun.”
“It’s really very intuitive and easy to use.”
No previous technical knowledge or programming experience is required to develop a module in the CMS, she says. “I know nothing about it,” Dr. Roy laughs. “I couldn’t do that at all. And I’d say 95% of the time you don’t even need to be able to do it.”
In order to work with the content management system, Dr. Roy first went through an e-learning programme in which she received recommendations and tips. A guide that she was able to follow. She was then able to immerse herself in the CMS and upload her own content, such as texts, videos or audio recordings. “It’s really very intuitive and easy to use,” she reflects. “Plus, the options you have are great. I’ve really been able to incorporate a lot into the module.”
Questionnaires are part of the module
Dr. Roy also found it important to include questionnaires in her own module to be able to compare patients’ moods before and after using the module. These are automatically queried and analysed, which she finds timesaving. “Some questionnaires are already available in Minddistrict. For example, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, which asks about self-esteem. But it is also very easy to incorporate additional questionnaires yourself.”
She first uses the questionnaire functionality at the beginning of the module: “To see, how is the self-esteem, are there depressive symptoms, are the patients particularly anxious,” Dr. Roy explains. “Then the module is run through and then we look at it again: how is the quality of life now, how is the depression now – so does the person still have depressive feelings. So, exactly the same questionnaires again at the end to see if the module has improved anything. Which of course I would like to see.”
In practice, these patient surveys do not always have to contain only elaborate questions. Among other things, Dr. Roy also uses a slider with which patients can simply indicate on a scale of 0 to 10 how they feel about their quality of life, for example.
“We have already been able to activate [the module] for some patients, who have been very happy with it for now.”
A look into the future
What are the next steps for her module? “We have already been able to activate it for some patients, who have been very happy with it for now,” Dr. Roy says. And there have even already been reactions from users: “They have already given me initial feedback, which I was able to implement directly.”
In the future, she would like to conduct a study to investigate how effective the module is and compare how patients feel before and after completing the module. “To see, with questionnaires, how the patients are doing before, and when they have completed the module, what has changed.”
More about the CMS
Learn more about our content management system here.
Do you have any further questions? Then get in touch with our team!