An online system to monitor symptoms and cravings will help combat heavy drinking and alcohol use disorders, which affect about a third of men and a quarter of women in Australia at some point in their life, reports the University of Queensland.
University researchers and Queensland Health practitioners developed the system – known as iAx – which is being evaluated in alcohol and drug units at the Princess Alexandra and Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospitals, according to University of Queensland (UQ) material published on 7 September 2020.
Associate Professor Matthew Gullo from UQ’s National Centre for Youth Substance Use Research, said his aim as a clinical psychologist had been to replace paper-based assessment tools with an accessible computerised delivery system designed by practitioners, for practitioners.
“With iAx, both the patient and their health practitioner can gain a better understanding of the alcohol use problems they are working to address,” Gullo said.
“Severity of symptoms, frequency of cravings and patient’s confidence in drinking control are monitored throughout treatment to review and discuss at each consultation.
“I find that patients really value being able to clearly see how much progress they make in treatment, especially when they have had a slip and lost confidence.”
The project was funded by the Medical Research Future Fund’s Translating Research into Practice (TRIP) initiative.
Gullo said preliminary findings had been positive.
“We’ve shown iAx led to improvement in patient outcomes and a significant increase in practitioners using reliable, valid assessment tools,” he said.
“The next stage is to conduct a comprehensive analysis of improvements in specific patient drinking outcomes.
“We want to know if iAx helps practitioners deliver better treatment, resulting in fewer lapses into heavy drinking and less drinking during any lapses.
"We are also conducting interviews with patients about their experience of iAx in their treatment and asking practitioners about how they believe it affects their delivery of care.”
Instant assessment and personalised feedback system (iAx) for alcohol use disorder
The instant assessment and personalised feedback system – iAx – was developed to facilitate the use of theory-driven, standardised assessment in addiction treatment. The selection of assessments included in the base iAx system was theory-driven in order to assist practitioners with case formulation and treatment planning.
Key factors from bioSocial Cognitive Theory found to be predictive of motivation to seek treatment and treatment response were included, along with general markers of clinical interest.
iAx removes the time barrier for scoring and interpretation. It allows standardised assessments to be administered with a tablet computer and responses instantly scored, benchmarked against clinical averages, and visualised using colourful graphs for immediate interpretation by the practitioner and discussion with the patient.
The iAx is free, can be delivered through a tablet or desktop computer and runs on any operating system. Any standardised questionnaire or interview assessment can be loaded onto iAx to suit a wide variety of clinical applications.
[link url="https://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2020/09/new-digital-tool-improve-treatment-people-alcohol-addiction"]New digital tool to improve treatment for people with alcohol addiction[/link]
[link url="https://sites.google.com/view/matthewgullo/iax"]Instant assessment and personalised feedback system (iAx) for alcohol use disorder[/link]