In his director's blog, Dr. Insel, Director of NIMH, described new directions for research: [W]e need to stop thinking about moving research to practice and start thinking about moving practice to research...The idea is simple: understand what works in the real world of practice by using scientific methods, like randomization and statistical comparisons, to create a learning health care system...linking health information databases and creating an efficient process for assessing outcomes (Insel 2012). The immediate goal of this Phase I & II fast-track SBIR revised submission is to develop sophisticated and highly configurable behavioral health outcomes tracking portal and dashboard, called the PORTAL. Our hypothesis is that by giving clinicians and researchers real-time access to patient-centered information, and populating the resulting data into patients' electronic health records, the PORTAL can help facilitate a paradigm shift in both clinical research and routine mental health care delivery, improve clinical care, and turn clinical care networks into dynamic centers for clinical research. In building the PORTAL, we plan to develop and test the first fully configurable behavioral health outcomes tracking software platform, integrate it with three major EHR networks, and ensure that clinicians, managers and researchers will find it useful. For this project TeleSage has partnered with Cerner/Anasazi, Netsmart Technologies, and The Echo Group, three of the largest behavioral health EHR companies in the world, as well as their clinical affiliates and a group of outstanding consultants from industry and academia. This project represents the culmination of TeleSage's 16 years of experience developing four hard-coded statewide behavioral health outcomes tracking systems, creating widely used behavioral health research tools, and performing custom integration with two EHR systems in Louisiana. The PORTAL will consist of Data Acquisition, Database, and Dynamic Analytic Dashboard Modules. It will be programmed using a state-of-the-art software platform and languages, and enable secure, HIPAA- compliant data transfer with EHR software via HL7. The platform will incorporate diagnostic, IRT/CAT survey, scheduling, core analytic, as well as data display functions from the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN), as well as report generation functions, full documentation, and training videos. The software will be fully field tested on a variety of hardware, software platforms, and bandwidths, using quantifiable outcomes. Because it will be a developed as a configurable outcomes tracking platform rather than as a hard-coded system and because it will be designed to integrate into EHR systems, the PORTAL should greatly reduce the cost of purchasing and maintaining a sophisticated behavioral health outcomes tracking systems. Using the PORTAL, clinician researchers might realize Dr. Insel's vision.
The goal of this SBIR Fast Track proposal is to develop a Behavioral Health Outcomes Tracking Portal (PORTAL) to facilitate mental health research and improve the dissemination and adoption of evidence-based mental health interventions (please see NIH PA-14-071). This project will bring together TeleSage's existing tools for behavioral health outcomes tracking with TeleSage's experience and expertise with the design of new software for advancing the field of behavioral health research and clinical practice. The proposed PORTAL will encourage patient-centered clinical care, promote recruitment for mental health research, stimulate targeted data mining of mental health outcomes and practice-based evidence, promote implementation of interventions backed by practice-based evidence, produce and disseminate client-specific and aggregate reports to encourage effective application of patient-centered care within clinical practice, as well as detect and monitor mental illness progression, thereby effectively improving overall clinical care in behavioral health and facilitating advances in behavioral health research.
| Brodey, Benjamin; Purcell, Susan E; Rhea, Karen et al. (2018) Rapid and Accurate Behavioral Health Diagnostic Screening: Initial Validation Study of a Web-Based, Self-Report Tool (the SAGE-SR). J Med Internet Res 20:e108 |
| Brodey, Benjamin B; Gonzalez, Nicole L; Elkin, Kathryn Ann et al. (2017) Assessing the Equivalence of Paper, Mobile Phone, and Tablet Survey Responses at a Community Mental Health Center Using Equivalent Halves of a 'Gold-Standard' Depression Item Bank. JMIR Ment Health 4:e36 |
