Treatment Development & Evaluation Core

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TREATMENT DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION CORE PROJECT SUMMARY Digital therapeutics hold great promise in overcoming the substantial challenges in accessing high quality, empirically supported treatments for substance use disorders (SUDs) and co-occurring mental or physical health conditions (CODs). Digital innovations can enhance the potency of existing interventions, extend their reach, and reduce costs. Digital biomarkers from behavioral and physiological monitoring using smartphones and wearable sensors (i.e., passive sensing) can improve specificity of assessment processes that in turn can provide personalized targets to optimize interventions. Supporting the development of digital therapeutics is vital, as most persons with SUDs do not receive SUD treatment, and of those who do receive treatment, only a minority of treatments are evidence-based. Over the past 9 years, the Treatment Development and Evaluation (TDE) Core has supported activities that enhance and expedite research on an array of technologies that can improve treatment delivery. Our Core affiliates’ research has advanced the feasibility, acceptability, usability, and efficacy of innovative digital health assessment tools and interventions for multiple types of SUDs among diverse populations. These projects have also improved our understanding of developmental, and maintaining factors, and mechanisms of change for SUDs. In the proposed renewal period, the TDE Core will continue to enhance the quality, efficiency, and impact of research projects among an interdisciplinary expert faculty. The Core will continue with, and expand activities for, sharing resources among CTBH affiliates and the greater scientific and clinical communities (Aim 1), and provide mechanisms to support the acceleration and accumulation of science that will enhance our understanding of factors that can optimize digital therapeutics for SUDs and CODs (Aim 2). These efforts will embrace the 5 new CTBH priorities (e.g., scaling of digital therapeutics, digital measurement to inform personalized just-in-time adaptive interventions (JITAIs), integration of CODs and transdiagnostic mechanisms and interventions, digital health ethics, and inclusion of underrepresented minority populations). For example, we will enhance our consultation services for preparing competitive grant applications by expanding the array of Advisors with expertise in the priority areas, and will refine the focus and enhance the intensity of our educational activities by developing and delivering webinars, tutorials, and cross-Core workshops that provide in-depth training on high priority research targets. The Core will also engage affiliates with active or pending digital health projects to include additional research aims that address our new priorities. e.g., add common metrics of outcomes related to scaling, mechanisms of change, or transdiagnostic processes; include passive sensing assessment to collect digital phenotyping data that may relate to substance use or relapse; and assess CODs in SUD projects to evaluate how they moderate intervention effects and how transdiagnostic interventions impact outcomes. These efforts will accelerate the state-of-the science of digital therapeutics for SUDs and related conditions across diverse populations.