Preamble

“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. It’s also what it takes to sit down and listen”

– Sir Winston Churchill.

In early 2022, a good friend and mentor mentioned the Churchill Fellowship to me once again. In previous conversations, the timing hadn’t been quite right, nor had the idea and proposal been well thought out enough to give it a decent tilt.

I followed her own Fellowship journey some years before this. She had an extraordinary opportunity to travel, explore, meet, collaborate and digest a flurry of information from global digital health experts and come back home with a wealth of knowledge to disseminate.

Fast-forward a few months. With some encouragement from family and friends, and a few invested colleagues backing me in, I submitted the application, sat through two terrifying interviews where I was grilled on my proposal from the Churchill Trust selection panel; and then the excrutiating wait for the outcome.

Somehow, I managed to convince the panel of the value of exploring the synergy between mental healthcare and digital innovation – and that it was worthwhile jetsetting around the globe to investigate. It was my time to give it a shot.

There’s no debate that Australia is a world leader in digital mental health service provision. For almost two decades now, trailblazing researchers, clinicians, tech entrepreneurs and Governments have well established the sector. My question is: can we do digital mental health better? And perhaps more importantly, can we make it more accessable, equitable and streamlined?

So what is the task at hand? Over an 8-week period, I set off on the journey of a lifetime. My goal is to investigate ‘safety and quality improvements in digital mental health service provision in Australia’ (more on my project here). Specifically, I will be looking closely at international models of digital therapeutics (DTx) prescribing and reimbursement schemes. I’m also keen to explore what well-integrated digital health ecosystems look like, and how mature interoperobility can support better mental healthcare.

I start in Washington DC, head across the Atlantic to Scandanavia (Norway and Denmark), on to Portugal, Switzerland and France, and finish up with two weeks in Berlin, Germany. I will meet with international digital mental health experts, policy and regulatory specialists, global health and government representatives, tech entrepreneurs and consumer advoacy groups.

So what do I want from all of this? DTx have shown great promise as a new way to address chronic diseases, including mental illness. I intend to use this opportunity to see what good looks like, but also demonstrate how exisiting DTx prescribing and reimbursement models could be applied to the Australian context.

Reflecting on those wise words from Sir Winston at the beginning of this spiel, the Churchill Fellowship gives me the opportunity to sit, listen and reflect on what best practice looks like in the hope we can apply some of that thinking to improve the lives of Australians doing it tough.

I hope you can follow my journey and share in what will no doubt be a rich, fulfilling and humbling experience.