Dr Rob Nolan on the Future Directions of eCounseling Research

After presenting the results of the REACH eCounseling hypertension intervention at the American College of Cardiology 66^th Scientific Session, lead author Rob Nolan, PhD, CPsych, director of Cardiac eHealth at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre and clinical psychologist and scientist at the Toronto General Research Institute, discussed his team’s plans for future eCounseling research.

Transcript (slightly modified)

Are there further studies planned to evaluate the effectiveness of eCounseling?

Yeah, we’re excited that we have a parallel study going in the area of heart failure, and the research design is very similar. We’ve been able, though, to really significantly update our e-platform and so now we have a fully functioning and integrated eCounseling platform that integrates these videos, e-tools, e-trackers for self-assessment, also that provides information.

We can follow people’s footprints through the system really precisely, so we know not only the number of log-ons, but what pages are proving to be most helpful for them or how much time are they spending on the program as a whole, so we’ll be able to look at not simply was eCounseling more effective in helping people make therapeutic changes in their lifestyle, but what components of the program were responsible for that. That just helps us to standardize this in a better way or to tailor it to the presenting needs of our participants or patients, and to look at mediators of therapeutic outcomes so we can better replicate the findings.