Digital Mental Health The Future is Now

Prof. Davor Mucic is a distinguished medical doctor, educated in Rijeka, Croatia, with specialized training in psychiatry obtained in Denmark. He has a profound interest in leveraging technology to enhance mental health care, particularly in the field of e-Mental Health.

In 2000, he founded the Little Prince Psychiatric Centre in Copenhagen, where he pioneered the development of telepsychiatry. In 2011, he launched the Telemental Health Section within the European Psychiatric Association (EPA) and currently serves as the chair of the WPA's Digital Mental Health Section.

Prof. Mucic is the Editor-in-Chief of the Edorium Journal of Psychiatry and actively contributes as a reviewer for the Egyptian Journal of Psychiatry and as a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for the Journal of Pakistan Psychiatric Society .

He has authored numerous scientific articles on telepsychiatry, including foundational work on the first international and cross-cultural telepsychiatry services established in 2004. Additionally, he has explored various e-Mental Health applications in the edited book, e-Mental Health , published by Springer in 2016.

In response to the mental health challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, he coordinated the WPA’s “Expert Group on e-Mental Health” in 2020. He is also the main author of the recently published WPA Telepsychiatry Global Guidelines. For his significant contributions to the field, Prof. Mucic was honored with WPA Honorary Membership in 2020 and successfully defended the first doctoral dissertation on telepsychiatry in the EU in May 2022.

Dr. Donald Hilty is a scholar in psychiatric and medical education, health services, and telemedicine. He works as a Professor of Psychiatry at the UC Davis School of Medicine, and as Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of United Health Services and Heritage Oaks Hospital, and as a liaison to professional organizations and the Veterans Health Administration to implement technology. As CMO, he has overseen development of COVID Psychiatric and Medical-Psychiatric units and The Joint Commission accreditations. He speaks internationally and has obtained approximately 20 federal and state grants for and models of care, health services, mood disorders, health economic outcomes and implementation of technology (e.g., video, mobile health, wearable sensors and artificial intelligence). Dr. Hilty’s current research is in implementation and evaluation of video, social media, mobile health and asynchronous – the focus is user-centered design, workflow, technology fatigue, clinical competencies for clinicians and institutional competencies for organizations. He facilitates collaborations with teams worldwide via service to the American, European and World Psychiatric Associations (APA; WPA).

Dr. Hilty is active with pedagogy, professional/faculty development and publishing. Dr. Hilty serves as Editor of the Journal of Technology in Behavioral Science (JTIBS) , Editor of the Innovation in Technology Column for Academic Psychiatry and as a member of many editorial boards. He has led or co-led 10 special editions related to video and mobile health technology, clinical care and professional development. These include: “The WPA Global Digital Mental Health Care: Evidence, Implementation, Guidelines and Policy” in JTIBS , “Professional Development in Psychiatry and Medicine” in Psychiatric Clinics of North America , and “Digital Interventions for Mental Health” in Frontiers in Psychiatry . He has written 180+ journal articles, 100+ chapters and many other publications, including for the APA-Institute of Medicine and APA-American Telemedicine Association Guideline Writing Groups. Dr. Hilty led a team in publishing Virtual Mental Health for Rural, Underserved and Diverse Settings in 2023 and Dr. Mucic and he are doing a second edition of Digital Mental Health in 2024 – both by Springer Nature Publishing.