In 2023 the Project Group eHealth will be organising a webinar series on the potential of technology for psychology. A first kick-off event already took place on 22 November 2022 at Vilnius University during the European Semester of Psychology, which was being hosted by the Lithuanian Psychological Association.
In this free hybrid event, which could be attended in person or via live stream, you could learn more about the potential of technology and how to practically implement this (already) in your daily practice.
Over the course of two hours, four speakers shared their experiences and insights.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, only a small proportion of psychologists had experience in teleconsultations by videoconference or phone, and fewer had had training. After that crisis, the situation changed dramatically, but opportunities for training continue to be scarce and needed. Now, the focus should be on training psychologists in several dimensions, such as delivering adequate clinical and assessment services, following available guidelines, and paying particular attention to cybersecurity issues and ethical demands.
A growing body of evidence suggests that internet-based interventions can be effective for a variety of somatic and psychological problems. The research field on internet interventions has developed rapidly and the focus now is largely on improving the effects of various interventions based on cognitive behavioral therapy, psychodynamic therapy and others. At the same time efforts to implement internet-based interventions in health systems have had a varying success rate.
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Dr. Jonas Eimontas is a postdoctoral fellow and assistant professor at the Institute of Psychology, Vilnius University, Lithuania. His main research interests lay in the effectiveness of internet-delivered psychological interventions for depression, anxiety, and stress-related disorders. He is also interested in engagement, adherence, and the role of therapist support in internet-delivered interventions. He is also the representative of the Lithuanian Psychological Association in the EFPA eHealth group. |
The advancement of mobile phone technology and wearable devices is ushering in a new era in psychological assessment and treatment. By harnessing the potential of technology to provide intensive longitudinal data on psychological processes, psychologists are now begging to unravel individual differences in intra-individual psychological dynamics. This has opened up new and interesting research questions on the daily dynamics of our human experience and may in the future enable us to provide just in time psychological treatment, by for example effectively predicting increased suicidal risk or an oncoming psychotic episode. This brave new world of e-psychology however requires sufficient methodological knowledge of the statistical methods involved, as well as an increased appreciation of the dynamics and time granularity of the psychological processes we are trying to understand. We hope to start our listeners on the path to obtaining that knowledge by providing some introductory information on the current state-of-the-art of using mobile phones for ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and by offering some examples of how EMA is beginning to be used in daily clinical practice.
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David Gosar (PsyD, PhD) is a clinical psychologist working at the Department of Child, Adolescent and Developmental Neurology at the University Children’s Hospital in Ljubljana. His main research interests lie in the domains of developmental neuropsychology and neuroimaging. His research is aimed at understanding the neurobiological mechanism with underlie the cognitive, affective and social functioning of children and adolescents with different neurological and neuro-developmental disorders such as epilepsy, autism, neuromuscular diseases and specific genetic syndromes. In his work he also focuses on interventions for patients and families and has a keen interest in the etiology of dissociative and somatoform disorders. In addition to his interest in the field of neuropsychology, he is also pursues his professional interests in the domains of psychometrics and e-psychology. In collaboration with Slovenian test publishers he has been involved in the development and adaptation of numerous internationally recognized psychological assessment tools. He is also a member of the Slovenian test commission, advising the Slovenian Psychological Society on the practice of psychological assessment. As a member of the European Federation of Psychologists’ Associations (EFPA) Project group on e-psychology he also strives to help incorporate advancements in the field of e-psychology, data science and information technology into mainstream psychology in an ethically responsible and scientifically rigorous fashion. |
This talk briefly introduces the most important and clinically relevant immersive technologies: virtual reality, 360° video and augmented reality. We explain what these different technologies entail and that even though people might think they are relatively new, some have been around for decades and/or already used in clinical practice. Next, key advantages and disadvantages that psychologists should be aware of when using immersive technologies in their clinical practice are discussed, followed by a number concrete applications that are already available to use in clinical practice.
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Tom Van Daele is the head of the Expertise Unit Psychology, Technology & Society at Thomas More University of Applied Sciences and the convenor of the EFPA Project Group on eHealth. His work is predominantly practice-oriented and multidisciplinary: he educates students and clinicians on the use of technology, facilitates organizations with the integration and implementation of technologies within their services, and advices policy makers on how to accommodate healthcare systems to accommodate these innovations. His practice-oriented focus is also supplemented with more basic research, through positions at both KU Leuven and Queen’s University Belfast. |
João Salgado
Jonas Eimontas
David Gosar
Tom Van Daele