Mental health company Oh My Mood is set to shake up mental health provision in Scotland with blended care pathways that make mental health support more effective and accessible to service users.
Oh My Mood provides person-centric mental health care pathways, which seamlessly integrate digital tools with traditional face-to-face therapies. Their modular and holistic approach means that treatment programmes can be tailored and adapted to each individual service user. For example, healthcare practitioners can include lifestyle modules in individual care plans to tackle issues such as unhealthy eating, addiction disorders or lack of physical exercise, all of which can all cause or be an effect of mental health problems.
The Scottish Government’s new digital health and social care strategy calls for the use of digital technology to transform health and social care services so that care can become more person-centred. It is vital this is achieved without adding to currently heavy workloads. A blended care approach ensures a more efficient delivery of mental health care, easing the strain on care practitioners without adding pressure on NHS budgets.
Jaime Essed, founder and CEO of Oh My Mood, said: “Blended care, where traditional therapies and the latest eHealth methods are seamlessly integrated in mental health care pathways, is a relatively new concept but absolutely essential for the successful delivery of person-centred care.
“It is no longer enough to dictate a care plan to a service user. Rather, a collaborative care approach is necessary between care practitioner and service user, but also between mental health trust and social services.”
Oh My Mood recently gained the support of the Health Innovation exchange, a Liverpool-based collaborative programme designed to connect Liverpool City Region businesses with word-class health, care, technology and commercial resources. Oh My Mood will work with HIE-partner Liverpool John Moores University and their Improving Access to the Psychological Therapies (IAPT) team on the evaluation and assessment of its innovative care pathways, to provide evidence of its effectiveness and which will complete the development phase.
Essed continues: “We used evidence-based methodologies to develop our blended care pathways, which is already being used by a mental health trust in The Netherlands. The first results look very promising and we have ambitious plans to implement our IAPT-approved pathways with mental health trusts in Scotland and England to improve the overall level of care people so urgently need.”
