The addition of online therapy to IAPT’s offerings could relieve some of the pressure faced by the program. We’ve seen evidence that online therapies can be just as effective as more traditional face to face sessions, and for a lot of patients being able to complete some of their therapy sessions via the internet from the comfort of their own home is of huge value.
And yet uptake of online therapy in the UK has been slow to date.
We at Mayden have developed Prism, a pioneering new hub which will allow IAPT clinicians to refer patients to a range of online therapy providers for treatment, and which will then seamlessly and securely send patient progress notes and IAPT outcome data directly back into the patient’s digital care record in iaptus.
It’s our belief that Prism can:
- Improve waiting times – online therapies have minimal or zero wait time;
- Reduce the cost of treatment – online interventions on average are a fraction of the cost of face to face interventions;
- Maintain, and in some cases improve, patient outcomes; available in ways, at times and in places that suit them;
- Improve patient experience and choice – by making available a wider range of treatment options; and
- Safeguard patient welfare through secure, two way communication between referring clinician and online provider and a single integrated record of care.
We’re keen to understand the potential barriers to the adoption of online therapies and have launched a survey to engage the collective knowledge and experience of IAPT services across the country.
The survey will take just a couple of minutes to complete, but your input could shape the way talking therapies are delivered in the future. You’ll find the survey here.
We’ll be hosting a series of events in the autumn, highlighting the benefits of offering online therapies as part of your service. The results from this survey will be shared at these sessions as well as in upcoming reports from Mayden. If you would like to see the results, and to find out more about Prism, please sign up to receive the monthly iaptus enewsletter here.
If you are interested in discussing any of these issues further, please contact Rebecca Prestland at rebecca.prestland@mayden.co.uk
