The NHS 111 service has been expanded to include a 24/7 “full package” of mental health crisis support, offering people in crisis or concerned family members the opportunity to access support from a trained mental health professional at any time.
Designed for all ages, callers selecting the mental health option will be connected with NHS staff who will help to guide them next steps such as face-to-face community support or crisis cafes.
Highlighting demand for support which was previously handled through local health systems taking around 200,000 calls per month, NHS national director for mental health Claire Murdoch notes that the initiative provides “people everywhere in England one single point of access via NHS 111”.
Digital projects and progress from NHS England
As part of HTN’s regular coverage of the latest on digital and data from NHS England, we recently explored NHSE’s July board meeting highlights, which stated that accelerating the take-up of innovation will be “core” to the organisation’s approach, and noted the upcoming publication of full community mental health metrics in autumn of this year.
The last month also saw NHSE’s release of clinical guidance highlighting principles around the automation of test result release in patient engagement portals, along with requirements around portal functionality; whilst a letter sent in August from NHS England to accountable emergency officers for trusts and integrated care boards outlined the emergency preparedness, resilience and response (EPRR) exercise programme for 2024 to 2030.
There was news to be found in the procurement space too, with NHSE publishing two pre-procurement notices: one for a digital weight management programme worth an estimated £23 million, with the aim of delivering a behavioural lifestyle intervention over a 12-week period for people living with obesity; and another worth £18 million signalling the beginning of market engagement on an EPR system to capture health data and records across the health and justice area.
Spotlight on tech supporting mental health
At HTN we regularly host live events intended to share learnings and best practice across the NHS. For one such recent webinar, we were joined by members of the NHS England Blueprinting Programme to explore good practice around implementing digital healthcare solutions, with a case study from the Support Hope and Recovery Online Network (SHaRON) programme, a digital initiative “borne from the idea that there should be a mechanism to access peer-to-peer support outside of the usual office hours”.
In mental health tech and innovation, July brought news from Norfolk and Waveney ICB in the form of a notice seeking expressions of interest from suppliers for the provision of a digital offer for children and young people’s mental health, with a total value over a potential three years of £1.17 million.
This month, we noted how a chatbot function has been launched on the NHS Coventry, Warwickshire and Solihull Talking Therapies website, designed to take website visitors through an online conversation and exercises to process referrals to the service.
