Original title: An Experience Sampling-Integrated Digital Navigator Model for Personalised Mental Health Care
Laura Montauti, Samuel Badu, Dan W. Joyce, Xiaoxiao Hou +2 · September 2026
Health apps collect useful data, but doctors often struggle to use this information in routine care. Usually, digital navigators help patients set up apps, learn the software, and fix tech bugs. In this paper, the authors propose a new way to use these workers. They suggest turning the digital navigatorA person who helps patients use digital health tools like apps or devices. role into an extension of mental health nursing. Instead of only providing technical support, trained mental health nurses would use digital health tools to gather information, make sense of the data, and guide treatment choices. Because these nurses already know how to assess patients and plan personal care, they can turn detailed app data into meaningful insights that fit directly into everyday patient treatment.
Imagine you have a personal assistant who sets up your new smartphone and shows you how to use it. But once you start using it, the assistant disappears, and you are left with a pile of data you do not know how to use. In this paper, the assistant is replaced by a nurse who not only sets up the phone but also helps you understand what the data means and how it relates to your health, so you and your doctor can make better decisions together.
Currently, digital health tools collect lots of data but clinicians rarely use it. This model proposes that mental health nurses, with their training in assessment and care planning, are the right people to turn that data into actionable insights. That could make mental health care more personalised and effective, without requiring new specialists.
This is a perspective paper, so it does not provide empirical evidence or test the proposed model. It does not address practical barriers like training requirements, cost, or clinician buy-in. The model's effectiveness in real-world settings remains unproven.
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An Experience Sampling-Integrated Digital Navigator Model for Personalised Mental Health Care — Laura Montauti, Samuel Badu, Dan W. Joyce et al. — PsyArXiv — doi:10.31234/osf.io/825fh_v1
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper. This is a preprint, so it hasn't necessarily been peer reviewed.