Patients using a tablet-based app were more than twice as likely to disclose depression, intimate partner violence, and fall risk compared with verbal screenings, according to a new study.
The study, published online today in JAMA Network Open, includes the use of mPath, a tablet-based app created by a team of researchers at Wake Forest School of Medicine.
Researchers studied the use of the app at six primary care practices among patients age 18 years or older. The app, which exists on a tablet that's given to patients at check-in, includes screening questions for depression, intimate partner violence, and fall risk that would otherwise be asked verbally by nurses. The results of the questionnaires are transmitted to a practice's EHR.
"We were surprised to find that the app detected so many more people with depression or safety concerns compared to when nursing staff were asking the same questions verbally," lead author David Miller Jr, MD, a professor of internal medicine and public health sciences at Wake Forest School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, told Medscape Medical News"To put [the study results] in context, for every 10 patients who walked in the door, our app found one additional person with concerns that would have been missed."
