Chapter 25.Use of Technology in Geriatric Psychiatry

Geriatric psychiatry is changing. Although the field has largely focused on providing primary psychiatric care to older adults, over the past decade there is a clear trend indicating the current geriatric mental health workforce is not adequately equipped to provide appropriate care to an ever-increasing population of older adults. This discrepancy is only likely to grow. A report by the National Academy of Medicine clearly identified the shortage of a geriatric workforce as a major issue of public health relevance and approaching crisis. The future of the field will depend on creating models of care that allow maximal dissemination of geriatric psychiatric expertise. Development of these models of care will need to be combined with a rethinking of the current trends and diagnostics and treatment for older adults. It has been well recognized that the presentation of most psychiatric symptoms with aging differs from that in younger populations. As the concepts of precision medicine and personalized care are effectively translated from research into clinical practice, it is becoming possible to quantify the ways in which psychiatric symptomatology in late life differs from that earlier in life. Thus, the availability of new tools to quantify presentation at the level of the individual is now beginning to create intriguing possibilities for the ways in which we measure, monitor, and provide care.