🎯 Only 50% of young individuals with mental health disorders respond to treatment.
📊 What if we could tailor mental health care to the unique profiles of each patient, with the aim of improving treatment success?
In our article published in Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, my co-authors and I share what we learned through an innovative precision mental health project aimed at doing just that, a project I worked on as an evaluation consultant through Vitus Research & Evaluation.
🧠 An innovative care pathway in a paediatric mental health outpatient clinic was designed to allow for neuropsychology data to be integrated into psychotherapeutic care. And why is this important?
Neuropsychological assessments provide critical insights into brain function. Yet this rich data often remains disconnected from treatment planning for several reasons. Currently, the demand for neuropsychological assessments far exceeds availability, and clinicians often don’t have access to this data. As a result, they cannot incorporate it into care planning. This gap can lead to mismatched therapies that fail to address the unique needs of patients, potentially resulting in suboptimal outcomes.
This new care pathway aimed to address this issue by incorporating neuropsychological data into the treatment process for *more patients, increasing access without increasing the length of treatment . This was achieved by designing new processes , integrating digital tools into the hospital's electronic records system, sharing easy-to-understand reports with clinicians and patients, and simultaneously evaluating the implementation of the pathway.
The results demonstrated the feasibility of the pathway, its perceived value and provided insights for future research.
My participation in the EIT Health “Harnessing Health Data for Innovation” program has been shaping my understanding of this innovative project.
Innovation is not just about introducing new tools or technologies. It’s also about reimagining how we use existing resources, systems, and data to better serve patients.
Our manuscript discusses an innovation implemented in one section (outpatient clinic) of one hospital (Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario) in Canada. The results are context-specific, and more research is needed to evaluate the impact of this pathway on clinical outcomes. These are important caveats to remember. But as the European Health Data Space aims to make cross-border health data sharing a reality, I wonder about the future of such innovative patient care pathways across Europe.
Imagine if a child’s brain function data could inform their treatment plan, no matter where they receive care within the EU—or anywhere in the world. By rigorously evaluating these new approaches in various clinical contexts and jurisdictions, we can test what’s possible and reimagine better mental health care for everyone, everywhere.
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