Colleges Leverage Tech to Improve Mental Health Options
Kennedy reached out to Curt Carver, the university's vice president for Information Technology and CIO, who quickly got on board with the idea of developing an app. Kennedy and her Counseling Center staff then spent long hours defining what an app would need to do. "We asked Curt if we could have it go live in January and he just said, 'Let me talk to my team,'" she recalled.
Carver, for his part, noted that he had put a lot of effort into building an efficient and responsive IT department. So, for this project, no additional funding was expected. "We commit to delivering a specific number of functions and improvements annually that support what the university is doing," he explained. The app was just another case in point, making it "free" as far as the folks concerned with student well-being were concerned.
Carver said that as soon as the pandemic kicked off, his team had already started working with Google and Apple on public health-related projects. "We were one of their earlier partners on the exposure notification app, and later worked on symptom tracking," Carver explained. His team was already focused on agile methods, so when the need for a mental health app was identified, "we had the capability to rapidly build a protype and then to immediately deploy," he said. In fact, less than a month after Kennedy contacted Carver's team, a prototype was up and running.
Since delivering the completed app in January of 2021, it has even been updated.
While not everyone has the IT resources to create "homegrown" answers to mental health challenges, one thing seems certain: Like many other pandemic changes, the reliance on technology to help students face their mental health challenges is likely here to stay.
"As we gear up fall semester, one of our largest marketing messages to new and returning students will be focused on understanding the range of in-person and virtual health and wellness services available to them," said Williams at the University of Kentucky. "We feel certain that this will continue to deepen the impact of these platforms on our campus."
About the Author
Alan Earls is a technology and business writer based in Massachusetts.