Supplementary use of the app by service providers and role description

elona therapy is a therapy-accompanying and supportive two-sided health application based on the scientific concept of integrated psychotherapy. Existing psychotherapy (usually cognitive behavioral therapy) is supplemented with digital solutions so that patients have easy access to tailored psychotherapeutic resources even between therapy sessions. Through integration, therapy can be intensified and the transfer of therapeutic content into everyday life increased. A variety of studies (e.g. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics: Klein et al., 2016; Journal of Affective Disorders: Schuster et al., 2020) has already shown positive effects of interlinked psychotherapy compared to conventional talk therapy.

Roles for care providers and patients

Role of service providers:

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

Role of patients:

• Patients who have opted for the cognitive behavioral therapy procedure and would like to use Elona Therapy in addition to their outpatient psychotherapy submit a prescription to their statutory health insurance company, load the elona therapy app onto their smartphone and activate a user account using the code received from the health insurance company. You then connect with your practitioner via a numeric code or, alternatively, a QR code (after enabling the camera).
• In elona therapy, patients have access to disorder-specific (e.g. depression, anxiety disorder) or cross-disorder (e.g. relaxation) modules. Your practitioner can individualize the selection of exercises and adapt them to the progress of the treatment between the content of the therapy session. In this way, exercises can be used specifically to repeat topics, to deepen knowledge or to implement specific tasks in everyday life.
• Patients use elona therapy to carry out 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, plan activities and write down questions and findings for the next therapy session in elona therapy.
• Patients' individual inputs are not visible to the therapist. However, after completing selected exercises, it is recommended that the content of the therapy session be discussed with the practitioner and evaluated together. This further strengthens the integration of outpatient psychotherapy and digital health applications. In elona therapy, patients also have the option of enabling the development of their symptoms (e.g. mood progression) for their therapist.