Collecting data useful for mental illness diagnosis and treatment is challenging, as we lack quantitative biomarkers that might be used in standard health informatics, such as body temperature or blood pressure.
[7] Additionally, researchers are prototyping simple mobile applications that could replace portions of infrequent qualitative clinical interviews with more regular quantitative data.
Much of the telehealth literature is concerned with patient populations that are difficult to provide traditional medical care to, such as those in rural locations, soldiers, or veterans.
An inspector general review of US Veterans Affairs facilities in North Carolina and Virginia revealed that 36% of patients had to wait more than a month for appointments.
A review of several studies found that patients were generally satisfied with the medical care received via Telehealth, however the effectiveness and efficiency of programs reported mixed results.
Future applications may leverage location systems in modern mobile phones to track a user's geospatial activity and suggest certain actions through notifications if dangerous patterns are detected.
[14] In addition to new types of treatments and interactions, the introduction of technology and informatics has the ability to improve existing mental healthcare effectiveness and efficiency.
[17] The application of informatics in mental health has not become as pervasive, in spite of professional recognition[18][19] the domain appearing well suited to computerisation [20] and the need for quantified outcome evidence.