Digital Alcohol Self-management

Roughly 10,000 people a year start outpatient treatment or professional online counseling in Switzerland due to an alcohol problem. However only about half of them complete it regularly; relapses after completion are frequent. Around a third of these clients are undergoing treatment at one of the 39 centers involved: Bernese Health (Beges), Blue Cross (BK), Addiction Center Zurich (formerly known as the “Zurich Center for Alcohol Problems (ZFA)”), the Addiction Centers in the Canton of Zurich (FSKZ) or the national online counseling portal SafeZone.ch. The use of the internet as a source of information and the acceptance of eHealth apps by the population are constantly increasing. Clients in alcohol treatment are also increasingly using these media to organize their daily lives, maintain social contacts and seek face-to-face or telephone contact. In the future, clients of the participating institutions in German-speaking Switzerland should be able to benefit from a digital alcohol self-management tool (dAS tool) in their everyday life, as a supplement to face-to-face counselling or individual online counselling at Safezone.ch. In the project, the dAS tool, based on open source software, will be developed, implemented and evaluated. It will be used during the treatment and will continue to run seamlessly after the end of the treatment. It combines digital self-management via Chatbot with personal support from specialists and is designed to reduce treatment interruptions and relapses. The the aim is to evaluate the acceptance, use and effectiveness.