South London and Maudlsey NHS Foundation Trust has launched an online treatment and assessment guide for care given to older adults.
The website, called the Maudsley Care Pathways, aims to provide health professionals, users and carers with an interactive knowledge base on mental health services and treatments for older adults.
The guide, which has been designed to be used on desktop, tablets and mobile devices, focuses on five disorders: dementia, depression, personality disorder, psychosis and anxiety.
Professor Rob Howard, a professor of old age psychiatry at King’s College London and a consultant old age psychiatrist at the trust, said the launch of the website was the culmination of around 60 of the trust’s leading mental health experts working to provide a digital solution for people to manage their illness.
“Care Pathways mean different things to different people and organisations, but for me they should signal the very best and most clearly evidence-based assessment and care that we can give to our patients,” he said.
“It’s a staggering piece of work that will be of real benefit to our service users and clinicians and help them manage their care in the digital age like never before.”
The website takes people through the journey a person will go through once a diagnosis has been made and what kind of care that person can expect.
Each pathway has been written and agreed by a team of nurses, occupational therapists, psychologists, consultants and service users.
The user selects the disorder, chooses the type of disorder and the severity of the condition and will then be presented with a selection of relevant treatments.
The website is intended as being complimentary to the care the users currently receive and will not replace individualised assessment and personalised treatment plans.
It has been designed together with the trust’s service user and care advisory group in collaboration with King’s Health partners and software developer Onclick.