case mangagement/Healthcare/Tools for Practice Tuesday

Tools for Practice Tuesday: Conversa Health

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A few weeks ago I reviewed a chatbot “Ask Ana” that I met at #HIMSS18. This was a great product where you can ask questions of your fiscal data (and it even can ask questions you might not have being thinking about). After demoing this, the opportunity arose to learn about a chatbot for clinical care. Conversa Health offers a chatbot for clinical case management.

Similar to the previous chatbot I found Conversa’s user interface to be user friendly and intuitive. I demo’ed two tracks they had available. One was a preventive health screening and the other was discharge follow up a hip replacement. The preventive health screening asked thoughtful questions and provided education along the way…

I knew a little something about preventive health screenings but knew nothing about what it took to recover from hip surgery. It was interesting to walk through the process and answer the questions. I did not know all the answers but felt more knowledgeable after the interactions. It was also helpful in providing feedback…

I found this beneficial on the patient side; also on the back end they offer a lot of tools for providers that interact with it. You get real time insights and alerts to provide care management. Also they provide aggregate data on the population health level. You can come to a greater understanding of where gaps in care and education may exist. These conversational tools can also integrate with your EHR.

To Learn more you can see Conversa Health on their website and follow them on:


Child and adolescent/Family Therapy/social media

Social Media, Ethics, Depression, and Teens (oh my)

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A few weeks a go I had the pleasure of presenting as part of the First Global Social Welfare Digital Summit. This event was organized by Social Work Helper. I continue to think about how social workers should play in the ethical use of social media. It is easy to say that social media can be damaging to teens but it is more challenging to consider the benefits (a bit biased here).

In this presentation I reviewed the research and compared with interactions that I have observed in clinical practice. There is certainly evidence to suggest that social media has a impact on mental health. But I ask, is it all bad? How should we talk to the youth we work with about social media? How should we educate parents about the interplay between social media and depression?

In my 40 minute presentation I concluded how our role should be one of reducing harm and also finding ways to facilitate shared decisions about social media between parents and their children…

You can see the video here:


You can also see the slideshare here: