Database aims to improve mental healthcare of young

The First Episode of psychosis Research Network (FERN) has awarded a contract to Tribal Technology for development of a mental health database to improve the provision of mental healthcare to young people.

Under the contract Tribal Technology will deliver a dedicated database solution to enable FERN to manage its data collection and analysis requirements as part of a national project, to improve the care and diagnosis of young patients with mental health problems.

FERN is a new non-for-profit mental health research organisation, run from the universities of Birmingham and Sheffield. The new organisation has been set up to collect data, and carry out research to improve the care of young patients with mental health problems.

A central aim of the project is to improve earlier treatment rates and reduce the ‘Duration of Untreated Psychosis’ in the critical 12-18 months after the first incidence. In part it is hoped this can be achieved by developing best practice treatments to both complement, and help reduce, the need for long-term dependency on regulatory drugs to control conditions.

The project will also seek to address the difficulties GPs encounter in trying to identify the early signs of mental health problems in young people. Research shows that early diagnosis and treatment can prevent serious damage to a patient’s health and reduce the probability of longer-term disabilities developing.

Dr Zaffer Iqbal, national director of FERN, said: "FERN required a database that was comprehensive enough to manage a large quantity and a wide variety of data and that was interactive enough to enable doctors and clinicians to extract information to compare their own performance with others."

The hosted database will provide the data management backbone for the three-year research project, providing the ability to collate information on a wide of factors, including families and carers, illicit substance use and suicide risk.

Once operational the database should enable FERN members to input data electronically, via a secure online web portal. The system has been designed to meet Caldicott security and confidentiality requirements to be met over the use and storage of data, enabling geographic patterns to be identified while retaining patient anonymity.

By recording data on the pathways and treatments used in the detection of psychosis it is hoped that the FERN database provide with a unique research tool on mental health in the UK. Types of data to be collected include: referral dates, where help was sought by the client, when treatment was actually received, and the effect of treatment upon the patient’s health.

The project will initially be trialled in a cross-section of around 10 hospital NHS Trusts, and then rolled out in all of FERN’s 25 centres across England.