Objectives. To explore in-depth the views on Internet-based psychological therapies and their implementation from the perspective of National Health Service (NHS) commissioners and managers.Design. Qualitative interview study. Method.Ten NHS commissioners and managers participated in a semi-structured, coproduced interview. Each transcribed interview was double-coded and thematically analysed using The Framework Method. Results. Interviews generated three main themes. (1) Capacity issues across psychological therapy services create barriers to face-to-face therapies, and Internet-based interventions offer a solution. (2) Despite reservations, there is growing acceptance of Internet-based therapies. Different ways of connecting with patients are required, and Internet-based treatments are accessible and empowering treatment options, with guided self-help (GSH) preferred. Internet-based interventions may however exclude some individuals and be a threat to the therapeutic relationship between patient and practitioner. (3) Successful roll-out of Internet-based interventions would be facilitated by a strong empirical-or practice-based evidence, a national coordinated approach and timely training and supervision. Barriers to the roll-out include digital intervention set-up costs and delays due to NHS inflexibility.Conclusions. The study highlights factors influencing access to Internet-based therapies, important given the rapid evolution of e-therapies, and particularly timely given increasing use of remote therapies due to COVID-19 restrictions. Interviewees were open to Internet-based approaches, particularly GSH interventions, so long as they do notThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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