Technology-Assisted Care for Substance Use Disorders (SUDTECH). (Blending Team Product)
This NIDA/SAMHSA Blending Team Product is an online resource hub providing information and tools related to a variety of technology-assisted care for substance use disorders. Technology-assisted care is a rapidly evolving field focused on adding technology-based elements to a practitioner’s “toolkit” as a supplement and complement to their treatment repertoire. These elements take many forms and formats, including audio, video, animations, and/or other forms of multimedia. It also may use information from medical records or physiological data capture devices, and may be interactively customized or tailored to an individual user’s needs. Treatment practices administered via technology-based interventions include: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy; Community Reinforcement Approach (CRA); Contingency Management; Motivational Enhancement; Motivational Interviewing; and Screening, Brief Intervention and Relapse Prevention.
The SUDTECH site is a collaborative product providing information, videos, training, and other resource information for implementing technology assisted treatments/care to improve the quality and reach of treatment services for persons with substance use disorders. It includes curricula, research studies and links, video interviews with practitioners who use technology-assisted care, information on administrative and other considerations for implementing this type of approach, program models, and much more.
SUDTECH focuses primarily on two technology-assisted care models: Therapeutic Education System (TES) and Computer-Based Training for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT4CBT). A National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network protocol evaluated the effectiveness of TES (CTN-0044), a web-based psychosocial intervention for substance use disorder, and found that it doubled the odds of abstinence among clients who tested positive for substances, improved retention, and suggested that TES could be effectively substituted for a portion of face-to-face counseling and produce better outcomes. CBT4CBT is a web-based program that teaches a variety of skills to help people reduce their substance use. While not studied in the CTN, a randomized controlled trial of 77 individuals seeking outpatient treatment found that participants assigned to CBT4CBT submitted significantly more urine specimens testing negative for any type of drugs, especially cocaine, and tended to have longer continuous periods of abstinence during treatment.
Related protocols: CTN-0044