About the project
This project aims to provide new understanding of the medico-legal issues concerning automation and digitisation in mental health care. The project will expand Australia’s knowledge of digital modalities in mental health care to optimise support services, protect patient privacy, uphold user safety, and minimise risk to individuals and communities. The research is expected to improve mental health care by assisting people with mental health conditions, health practitioners, government agencies, courts and the broader public to use digital mental health technologies safely and effectively.
This research is funded by the Australian Research Council as part of the Discovery Early Career Researcher scheme (ARC No. DE200100483).
The Research
This research addresses a critical gap in Australian health and technology law scholarship. Digital practices in mental health and crisis support are expanding rapidly and urgent public attention is needed to examine the law and politics of these developments.
New practices include:
- ‘Digital phenotyping’, in which machine learning is used to analyse physiological and biometric data about a person, gathered by smartphone;
- AI-based suicide alerts which involve analysis of social media posts for the deployment of first responders during apparent crises;
- the reportedly 20,000+ ‘Mental health Apps’ currently available, of which the most popular 'fail spectacularly at privacy and security' according to a Mozilla Foundation report;
- ‘Digital pills’, which combine pharmaceutical pills with sensor and tracking technology;
- Monitoring and surveillance of students in schools and universities to detect distress, mental health crises and disability;
- Online self-assessment and self-diagnostic tools, often with hidden data-selling practices.
As with other areas of technological change, these developments need to be governed in ways for which there may be no precedents. Alternatively, it may not be immediately clear how accountability can be enforced, or whether existing or proposed tools are even appropriate.
Between 2020–23, this project drew on deliberative and doctrinal research methods to offer new insights into the growing automation and digitisation of care and support in the mental health context. Outcomes include a body of scholarship to inform public policy and debate and improve our ability to respond to digital mediation of mental health and disability-based care and support, thereby offering social, health, and economic benefits.