In a recent research article and blog post, Lois Parri of King’s College London found that a majority of clients preferred to receive cognitive remediation therapy in their own homes, rather than attend in-person clinics. Her interviews also revealed that patients valued the support and guidance of a clinician through therapy and felt that an intervention without this therapeutic connection would be less effective. It was also clear that ironing out any technical issues or challenges with digital skills prior to embarking on a telehealth intervention is quite beneficial.
Parri’s results are based on patients with psychosis, with a mean age of 40, but the success of videoconferencing as a means of delivering cognitive stimulation and remediation has been found across many different types of patients, including those with Multiple Sclerosis (Ghadiri et al., 2022), Parkinson’s Disease (Latella et al., 2023), Epilepsy (Samia et al., 2023), and Stroke (Lawson et al., 2020). Patients with neurological disorders are often not able to drive, making attendance at clinics a significant challenge for many.
The minister for Health and Aged Care in Australia, the Hon Mark Butler, has recently said “Telehealth has become a permanent feature of the health system today, as both patients and providers enjoy its convenience and potential to remove the tyranny of distance that has sometimes made health service delivery so challenging for rural and remote Australia, in particular.” And the federal government has recently invested 5 million dollars to improve the quality and safety of telehealth.
Allied Health clinicians who have found ways to use MEMORehab seem happy with the perks it provides (e.g., automatic appointment reminders, reports on client progress with online resources, no need for room bookings). From clinician feedback we’ve received, patients receiving therapy in groups bond well with each other over videoconferencing. However, like their patients, clinicians using digital programs for the first time may find that this approach requires a few uses before one becomes comfortable and familiar with the technology. After the first couple of videoconferencing sessions, both clinicians and their patients have usually adapted and subsequently progress easily. Indeed, the use of online programs for cognitive remediation seems an obvious win-win scenario for patients and clinicians.
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