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Telepsychiatry is not a new form of health IT. Technology and security has improved over more than 20 years, but it has only started to become widely available since 2012. The result is good news because doctors can begin offering video conference sessions to their patients at a low cost, and patients can feel secure that these sessions will remain confidential. That is, as long as the doctor chooses the right telehealth application.

At TTC, we experimented with more than one application before CTN Connect, which is provided to us as part of our membership in the California Telehealth Network (CTN). CTN Connect is powered by Arkadin and uses Vidyo technology. Our goal was to find an application that was secure, easy to use, and affordable. We believe CTN Connect is the best fit for our purposes, so we’re happy to promote both CTN and the application.

Benefits that derive from the use of telepsychiatry include cost savings, time savings, encourages a comfortable setting for sessions, and it even helps the environment (if you want to extend this with the butterfly effect). Let’s get something straight, though. The application your doctor uses should not be the same one that you use for casual video calls with friends and family. Those services enforce guidelines for use which means they can “moderate” calls, and they don’t need to adhere to strict health IT security standards. So be careful about this.

Telepsychiatry enables you, and your doctor, to skip driving to the office for your session, saving travel time and fuel costs. The benefits are obvious for both of you. Knowing that you are using a secure connection, you will feel comfortable working through mental health issues in the environment of your choice. If the telehealth application is compatible with smartphones and tablets, then you can be almost anywhere for your session.

Your psychiatrist can review worksheets with you, conduct tests using visual cues, refill prescriptions, and almost anything else they can do in person. Interviews with patients diagnosed with disorders ranging from mild to severe have reported a positive experience using telepsychiatry. Almost to a person, they say that they forget that the doctor isn’t in the room with them after only a few minutes.

It may be a stretch to say that telepsychiatry helps the environment, but every little bit counts. Right? For each telepsychiatry session, there is one less car on the road that would otherwise be driving to a doctor’s office. So when multiple individual sessions are occurring at the same time, it’s like one big carpool. Think about it…