NHS must open up to mental health apps

The NHS commissioning model is not fit for purpose for mental health apps, developers have said.

Speaking at the HANDI Health spring symposium, part of EHI’s Digital Health Festival, app developers argued that getting mental health apps off the ground in the NHS is difficult due to the way commissioners procure IT services.

Mark Brown, director of community interest company Social Spider, said that technology should make life easier for people, but that the NHS still seems like it has not understood this.

“Commissioning of mental health is a bit like a shopping list: ‘we want it to track moods, we want it to digitise care plans, we want it to play videos, collect data, we want, we want, we want.’ People love the idea of one-stop-shops and silver bullets,” he said.

“This pressure creates Frankenstein apps that don’t really do anything well. People picture digital Swiss army knives, but what they are really commissioning or building is a vacuum cleaner with a built in nasal hair trimmer which is also a Filofax and an MP3 player.”

He said that the funding model for mobile apps is not fit for purpose and a new model needs to be put in place.

“Commissioners won’t to go for a mobile app because it’s not viable for the next ten years. It’s a different commissioning model,” he said.

“The funding models we have around mobile apps aren’t right. Even if you find a commissioner who is willing to think in an agile fashion, the rest of the system won’t.”

Omar Qureshi, chief technology officer for ‘Buddy’, an SMS app which enables patients to keep a record of how they are feeling and what they are doing, echoed Brown’s points.

He said that the NHS needs to collaborate and get on board with innovative products and companies. “We need to make the NHS a place for innovation,” said Qureshi.  

Read a full account of the HANDI Health spring symposium in this week's Insight section.