Complementary use of the app by service providers and role description

elona therapy is a two-way health application that accompanies and supports therapy and is based on the scientific concept of interlinked psychotherapy. The existing psychotherapy (usually cognitive behavioural therapy) is supplemented with digital solutions so that patients have easy access to tailored psychotherapeutic resources even between therapy sessions. Through interlinking, the therapy can be intensified and the transfer of the therapy content into everyday life can be increased. A large number of studies (e.g. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics: Klein et al., 2016; Journal of Affective Disorders: Schuster et al., 2020) have already shown positive effects of interlinked psychotherapy compared to conventional talk therapy.

Roles for service providers and patients

Role of service providers:

• Service providers (usually medical and psychological psychotherapists specialising in behavioural therapy) Inform patients about the use of elona therapy in the context of therapy. and prescribe the DiGA using the familiar prescription form (sample 16). Service providers then create their patient in elona therapy and connect to their patient via a specially generated code after he/she has downloaded the application to his/her smartphone.
• elona therapy supports diagnostics and anamnesis with cross-disorder and disorder-specific questionnaires, psychometric tests and biographical anamnesis, which can be activated via elona therapy and processed by your patients.
• Monitoring of the course of the disease is possible through regular check-ups. Similarly, the current therapy progress (KZT1, KZT2 or LZT) can be viewed.
• You can create your therapy planning and treatment strategy from proven content. elona therapy offers a guideline- and manual-based "default" for this, which you can individualise based on your experience and assessment of the patient.
• You can unlock additional homework in the form of exercises and psychoeducational content.

Role of the patients:

• Patients who have opted for cognitive behavioural therapy and would like to use elona therapy as an adjunct to their outpatient psychotherapy submit a prescription to their statutory health insurance, download the elona therapy app onto their smartphone and activate a user account using the code received from the health insurance. You then connect to your therapist via a numerical code or alternatively via a QR code (after releasing the camera).
• Patients have access to disorder-specific (e.g. depression, anxiety disorder) or cross-disorder (e.g. relaxation) modules in elona therapy. Your therapist can individualise the selection of exercises and adapt them to the progress of the therapy or the content of the therapy session. In this way, exercises can be used specifically to repeat topics, to deepen knowledge or to implement concrete tasks in everyday life.
• Patients use elona therapy to do exercises that initiate and strengthen processes of reflection and change. Patients can access the activated exercises at any time and repeat them independently if necessary. In addition, patients can regularly record their mood in elona therapy, plan activities and note down questions and findings for the next therapy session.
• The individual entries of the patients are not visible to the therapist. However, after completing selected exercises, the patient is advised to discuss the contents with the therapist during the therapy session and to evaluate them together. This further strengthens the link between outpatient psychotherapy and the digital health application. In elona therapy, the patient also has the option of activating the development of his/her symptoms (e.g. mood) for his/her therapist.