Walden Becomes First Hospital To Use Mobile App To Help Patients Manage Eating Disorders

Waltham Patch  
July 2015

Walden Behavioral Care of Waltham, Mass., announced today that it has become the first hospital for treating eating disorders to use a mobile app for co-managing eating disorder recovery in real time.

The mobile health platform Recovery Record of Palo Alto, Calif., which can be used on an iPhone, iPad or Android, enables patients and their providers to continuously monitor progress. The system incorporates Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, a research-backed therapy for eating disorders; personalized meal plans; clinical goals, and motivation enhancement. Mastery of coping skills, an integral component of the platform, is directed at challenging unwanted behaviors and reducing vulnerability to relapse.

“Recovery Record extends treatment well beyond the limits of the therapy hour or program and is the next best thing to having medical staff treating patients around the clock,” according to Walden President and CEO Stuart Koman. “Continuously monitoring patients will help Walden’s clinical staff ensure that patients are receiving the right level and type of care. We can provide patients with the help they need when they need it most.”

Koman believes the app will lead many people who have avoided treatment to seek help. A majority of people who have eating disorders do not seek treatment, even though eating disorders can be life-threatening. In testing a beta version with 70,000 people, Recovery Record found that more than 30% of users had previously kept their eating disorders private and had not sought treatment before using the app.

Recovery Record CEO Jenna Tregarthen said, “The discrete app allows users to self-manage their recovery with behavioral monitoring, employs rewards such as aspirational songs and pictures to help users stay on track, and has built-in smart algorithms that detect opportunities for intervention and suggest relevant coping tactics in the moments they are needed.”

Walden will be the first eating disorder treatment hospital to implement a new feature that collects data charting patient progress and makes it readily available to clinical teams as part of standard care. Patients can provide data at their convenience using questionnaires that are secure and HIPAA-compliant.

All patients who enter Walden for an evaluation will sign onto Recovery Record and connect with Walden. All adult residential, partial hospitalization and intensive outpatient patients will eventually use the app continuously. IT protocols are being further developed for inpatient use.

“We considered several possible platforms,” Koman said, “but Recovery Record is by far the most advanced. Many of our new patients have already downloaded and experimented with the app before arriving at our clinics. Some of our clinicians are also familiar with the app.”

In addition, Walden will work with Recovery Record to develop outcome studies that could result in more effective treatment for eating disorders.

“By using the app to collect outcome data, we hope to achieve higher compliance, because patients will be prompted and will be able to provide data privately in their spare time,” Koman said. “Many of our younger patients will find this to be a natural extension of their treatment because of their general comfort with mobile technology.”

About Walden Behavioral Care

Walden Behavioral Care, LLC of Waltham, Mass., a private psychiatric hospital, treats eating disorders and psychiatric disorders. It is the only facility in New England that provides inpatient, residential, partial hospitalization and intensive outpatient care for patients with eating disorders. Walden also has satellite eating disorder clinics in Braintree, Peabody, Amherst and Worcester, Mass., and South Windsor, Conn. Additional information is available on Walden’s website at www.WaldenBehavioralCare.com.

About Recovery Record

Recovery Record is the Silicon Valley-based healthcare technology startup that created the Recovery Record platform that builds upon research to deliver mental health treatment in an engaging way on mobile devices. Recovery Record was accelerated by Stanford University’s StartX Med program. For more information, visit: http://recoveryrecord.com/landing/about.