There are numerous benefits to offering online therapy as part of a mental health service. IAPT is a great example of this, where we have seen digital interventions transform waiting lists, increase patient choice and help services see more patients – with the same resources, and without compromising on quality of care.
But online therapy is just one way that technology can be used to improve services. In recent years, digital technology has revolutionised workflows, efficiency and user experience across other sectors. Within the NHS, technology has generally been bolted onto existing ways of working, rather than used as an opportunity to rethink and drive forward the way care is delivered. As a result, our health services have been unable to harness the scale of transformation achieved elsewhere.
So what if we were to step back and reimagine the entire care pathway, putting digital first? What might the effect be on service delivery?
Many of the IAPT services we work with are beginning to think this way. For some time now, they’ve been digitising specific aspects of service – sending clinical correspondence electronically to GP practices, enabling people to self refer from their public-facing websites, offering online therapy, etc. But pioneering services are now using digital at every step along the care pathway – creating a seamless and fully digitised service which provides choice and flexibility throughout, as well as improving both service quality and patient experience.
At the top of the pathway, patients can self refer to their local IAPT service direct from the NHS Choices website, where many people begin their journey toward addressing their mental health problems. Once the referral is accepted, they can choose to enter digitally delivered therapy. Patients are able to complete their Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMS) remotely and securely before their appointment allowing valuable appointment time to be spent on treatment itself. Even Patient Experience Questionnaires (PEQs) are now being collected electronically by some services.
IAPT is one of the most data-driven services within the NHS, and the electronic patient record is the central thread which runs through it, enabling full data capture throughout the process. Each month, data about activity, treatment and outcomes is collected and reported. A benefit of the collection of all this clinical information is the potential it unlocks for data analysis. Using this information to improve service delivery – and ultimately patient experience and outcomes – is an enormous advantage of digitising services. Within our own clinical system, digital dashboards complete the end-to-end digitisation of the pathway and are enabling services to quickly analyse throughput, identify areas of inefficiencies and guide their own continual improvement.
The IAPT programme has successfully increased access to talking therapies, but it still has the capacity to meet just 15% of need. By March 2017, services are targeted to meet 25% of need without significant increases in resource. Digital will play a key role in supporting services in achieving this; both by delivering care online, and by harnessing technology to streamline services, reduce inefficiencies and free up staff time to spend on direct patient care.
Digital technology has the potential to revolutionise how services deliver care. IAPT services have made huge progress toward becoming digitally enabled, and both services and patients are beginning to reap the benefits.
