Mental Health Apps May Need A Better Evidence Base Than Is Currently Available.

This appeared last week:Don ’t judge a mental health app by RCT aloneAuthored by  Samineh Sanatkar Samuel HarveyIssue 1 / 13 January 2020 THE randomised controlled trial (RCT) model is a vital tool in clinical practice and helps establish, with reasonable precision, the usefulness of novel drugs and therapeutic techniques. As is implied in the name, RCT models are characterised by employing randomisation techniques and the presence of a control group. Successful randomisation to experimental and control groups ensures that all participant characteristics are equally distributed across the experimental conditions. With that, any confounding factors, both known and unknown, should not unduly influence the outcomes in one group more than in the other. The experimenter can be reasonably certain that any changes in the outcome variable can be linked back to the variable of interest (ie, the treatment method or drug administered). The control group is equally important – only with a... This is the initial part of the post - read more by clicking on the title of the article. David.
Source: Australian Health Information Technology - Category: Information Technology Authors: Source Type: blogs