This last week on May 25-28, some of us from the ConnectMe team had the opportunity to attend the Medical Informatics Europe conference in Genoa, Italy to present our latest research findings.

At the conference, Maria Hägglund, Josefin Hagström, and Charlotte Blease presented a panel session titled “ConnectMe – When Digital Support Becomes Digital Burden: Connected Mental Health and the Clinician Work Environment”. Despite being scheduled early on the first morning of the conference, the session attracted a strong audience in the main hall.

Maria opened the session by introducing the topic, outlining why it is crucial to focus on work environment of clinicians in mental healthcare in the context of connected mental health tools.

Next, Josefin presented preliminary findings from our 21 interviews, highlighting both benefits and risks identified by clinicians. She also introduced what we have come to call the “vicious cycle of clinician burden” (see figure below), a concept that emerged during our efforts to recruit clinicians. In short, as researchers seek to involve clinicians in studies of new, digital tools, both the tools and the research process itself can add strain on an already burdened workforce. This can lead to skewed representations in the data: clinicians with limited capacity may be underrepresented, while those with more flexibility are more likely to participate.

This is a critical reality to consider for us researchers to consider, and it likely extends to other fields where new tools are being implemented. It is also a perspective that we are actively incorporating into the remaining stages of the ConnectMe project.

Last but not least, Charlotte Blease presented the next steps of ConnectMe, with a particular focus on our upcoming Delphi study. In this phase, we will consult clinicians and other stakeholders to gather new perspectives on how their work environment can be improved.

The session concluded with an interesting discussion that turned out very fruitful for the team. For example, participants raised ideas about the emerging role of AI tools as connected mental health tools, and their potential impact on clinicians. While this topic has been included in our interviews, it was only explored briefly and may be subject of closer investigation in our coming studies.

Overall, we had a very positive experience at MIE2026, and hope to be returning next year with new insights and results from the ConnectMe project!

/ Josefin, Charlotte, and Maria