Digital Innovations in Psychosis Care: Evidence, Equity, and Practical Integration

Michelle Friedman-Yakoobian, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist and Assistant Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She is Principal Investigator of the Response to Risk Research Program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Co-Founder of the CEDAR Clinic, the first specialty clinic for youth at clinical high risk for psychosis (CHR-P) in Massachusetts. Dr. Friedman-Yakoobian has led multiple NIMH-funded studies developing psychosocial and digitally supported interventions for early psychosis, including work integrating smartphone based tools and measurement-based care into clinical practice. She has over 25 years of experience training and supervising clinicians and is actively involved in advancing digital mental health implementation through her work with the BIDMC Digital Clinic and statewide early psychosis initiatives.  John Torous, MD, MBI, is director of the digital psychiatry division in the Department of Psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), a Harvard Medical School-affiliated teaching hospital, where he also serves as a staff psychiatrist and associate professor. He has a background in electrical engineering and computer sciences and received an undergraduate degree in the field from UC Berkeley before attending medical school at UC San Diego. He completed his psychiatry residency, fellowship in clinical informatics, and master's degree in biomedical informatics at Harvard. Dr. Torous is active in investigating the potential of mobile mental health and AI technologies for psychiatry, and his team supports mindapps.org as the largest database of mental health apps, mindApps.ai for benchmarking AI chatbots, mindLAMP technology platform for scalable digital phenotyping and interventions, and the Digital Navigator program to promote digital equity and access. Dr. Torous has published over 300 peer reviewed articles and 5 book chapters on the topic. He directs the Digital Psychiatry Clinic at BIDMC which seeks to improve access to and quality of mental health care through augmenting treatment with digital innovations. Dr. Torous serves as editor-in-chief for the journal JMIR Mental Health, web editor for JAMA Psychiatry, and a member of various American Psychiatric Association committees.