Dr Karen Livingstone, national director of SBRI Healthcare, discusses how medical technology is playing a vital role in delivering effective mental health treatment.
The Autumn Budget delivered exciting news for mental health sufferers in the UK with the announcement of a £2 billion increase in funding dedicated to mental health services. The funding will be used to provide comprehensive mental health support and to ensure specialist services are available in every large A&E department throughout the country.
Chancellor Phillip Hammond himself admitted that mental health is an area of healthcare funding which has long been neglected. It is estimated that over one billion people globally have a mental, neurodevelopment or substance use disorder. This is the equivalent to a staggering 15-20% of the entire world population; however, with many cases going unreported, the true proportion suffering from mental health problems is likely to be even greater. Worryingly, the figures are on an upward trend: in the UK alone, the Mental Health Foundation predicts that by 2030 there will be over 2 million people suffering from mental health problems.
The good news is that there is a growing pool of medtech inventions that have been developed to meet the challenges posed by the burgeoning number of mental health patients. A number of these products are already in use within the NHS and gaining traction thanks to support from SBRI Healthcare, the NHS innovation funding and development programme.
Funded by NHS England, SBRI Healthcare runs a series of national competitions in partnership with the Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs) to identify the most innovative and effective solutions to critical health challenges within the NHS. Winning applicants receive investment and consultancy services from SBRI Healthcare enabling their inventions to be developed, honed and brought to market for use in the NHS and abroad, often securing additional funding from external sources along the way.
In 2014, the SBRI Healthcare competition called for technology solutions in the treatment of mental health, and uncovered several ground-breaking ideas in this field. Some examples of products identified as part of this competition that are either already available on the NHS or will be very soon are detailed below.
Prism
Prism is a digital platform developed and managed by healthcare technology company Mayden that provides a secure hub through which therapists can refer patients for online psychological treatments. Having worked with the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme, Mayden recognised the growing demand for an innovative easy-access treatment to overcome therapists’ limited resources. This platform allows both therapists and patients to monitor their progress and outcomes directly within the patient record, without creating further administrative work. In 2016, Mayden partnered with a number of digital therapy providers such as Silvercloud, Minddistrict, ieso and Big White Wall, offering safe, anonymous online support available 24/7, meaning that Prism was now available within the NHS. Around 33,000 patients across 46 NHS Trusts are now benefiting from access to Prism every year.
Pro Real
Pro Real is an immersive, avatar-based, virtual world software platform that provides patients with a safe, secure and confidential way to describe how they experience the world. Users can draw on the value of the VR environment to label strong feelings and name issues, as well as articulate hopes and concerns, all of which help to build resilience and support recovery. Independent research has shown that the software encourages emotional and cognitive responses, and reduces psychological distress. Since being successful in the 2014 SBRI Healthcare competition, the company has received nearly £1.1 million in funding from the programme. As well as being used by five NHS Foundation Trusts, ProReal is also find applications in social care settings, such as a youth counselling charity and providers of probation/rehabilitation services, as well as within several large corporate organisations.
P1vital
P1vital Products has developed a new digital health tool, i-Spero, to help patients with depression get the right treatment, sooner. Antidepressants typically take 4-6 weeks before they begin to take effect, and two-thirds of patients will not respond to the first antidepressant they are prescribed, making successful treatment and often lengthy trial-and-error process. i-Spero uses a proprietary machine learning algorithm to provide a rapid and personalised indication of the patient’s response to antidepressant medication, after only 7-9 days of treatment. Treatments that are not working can be altered or switched, ultimately resulting in better outcomes, faster. After initially promising results, the i-Spero technology is being tested in a large, randomised controlled trial of over 900 patients (490 in England across 30 GP practices) with results expected mid-2019. Complementing this is a new collaboration with Canterbury and Coastal CCG, which will provide a real-world evaluation of the system.
These three medtech innovations provide a small window into the opportunities there are to deploy technological solutions in a bid to overcome mental health problems. Buoyed by the recent boost in government funding for mental health services, the hope is that more and more pioneering solutions like these will find their way into NHS hospitals.
