As interest in and use of telehealth during the COVID-19 global pandemic increase, the potential of digital health to increase access and quality of mental health is becoming clear. Although the world today must “flatten the curve” of spread of the virus, we argue that now is the time to “accelerate and bend the curve” on digital health. Increased investments in digital health today will yield unprecedented access to high-quality mental health care. Focusing on personal experiences and projects from our diverse authorship team, we share selected examples of digital health innovations while acknowledging that no single piece can discuss all the impressive global efforts past and present. Exploring the success of telehealth during the present crisis and how technologies like apps can soon play a larger role, we discuss the need for workforce training, high-quality evidence, and digital equity among other factors critical for bending the curve further.

As the role of technology expands in healthcare, so does the need to support its implementation and integration into the clinic. The concept of a new team member, the digital navigator, able to assume this role is introduced as a solution. With a digital navigator, any clinic today can take advantage of digital health and smartphone tools to augment and expand existing telehealth and face to face care. The role of a digital navigator is suitable as an entry level healthcare role, additional training for an experienced clinician, and well suited to peer specialists. To facilitate the training of digital navigators, we draw upon our experience in creating the role and across health education to introduce a 10-h curriculum designed to train digital navigators across 5 domains: (1) core smartphone skills, (2) basic technology troubleshooting, (3) app evaluation, (4) clinical terminology and data, and (5) engagement techniques. This paper outlines the curricular content, skills, and modules for this training and features a rich online supplementary Appendix with step by step instructions and resources.

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Increasing both access to and quality of mental healthcare is a global priority. One solution is to integrate technologies such as smartphone apps and sensors directly into care. Acknowledging many prior attempts and barriers, we introduce the Digital Clinic which is an already functioning clinic using smartphone apps to augment and extend care today at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in Boston, Massachusetts. In this piece, we outline the theoretical foundation of the Digital Clinic and its emphasis on the therapeutic alliance, measurement-based care, and shared decision making. We explore both workflow and engagement challenges as well as solutions including a new care team member, the Digital Navigator, and the customization of technology. Acknowledging that the Digital Clinic is an evolving program, we offer details on our implementation in order to allow others to replicate, expand on, and improve these initial efforts.