Mental Health & Covid 19: enhanced decision support system

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Across the UK around 2 million people use adult mental health services every year, and because of the coronavirus pandemic around 1.3 million people were shielded and had to isolate themselves completely. These people and many others remain especially vulnerable because they have pre-existing mental and physical health conditions and social vulnerabilities as well.A team of people from the Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust and Otsuka Health Solutions, a digital health company, are working, on a project, to support mental health services to care for these vulnerable people by using the information recorded in the electronic health record.The purpose of the project is to help people who are in the most need of care and support not miss out on treatment when they need it and receive support at home rather than in hospital or in community facilities.A computer system, called MaST, has been developed, with service users and health care staff, to work out when a person is more likely to need crisis services. MaST was designed using mental health research to understand what makes one person's need for complex care greater than another person's.The team want to combine this with information about people from their health and social care records so that they are contacted regularly by the appropriate health services and offered the appropriate care and support to meet their needs. It is hoped that staff will be able to make better decisions and respond more rapidly,