With 14 years’ experience as a nurse practitioner in mental health, Aislinn Enright saw at first-hand how treatment regimes can fail those with mental health problems. Many struggle to understand their treatment plan precisely because of their underlying problem and end up missing appointments or dropping out of the system completely. This is distressing for all involved at a personal level, but no-shows and dropouts also cost health services a lot of money.
Enright has spent the past 10 years working in the e-mental health sector selling technology to UK health service providers. But solving the problem of poor outcomes for mental health patients was always at the back of her mind. Over time, as technology became smarter and devices such as mobile phones ubiquitous, she became convinced the use of mobile technology was key to cracking the problem.
In November 2014 Enright got together with her brother Anthony (an IT systems builder) and business development executive, Dervilla O'Brien, to put her ideas into action. They established HealthBridge Technology in February of this year and are in the final stages of completing the first version of CliniBridge, a new digital platform designed to support those receiving mental health treatment between clinical visits.
CliniBridge integrates different elements of a patient’s therapy and makes them accessible through a smartphone or tablet. CliniBridge is also valuable for clinicians as it gives them access to patient data to improve therapy recommendations and interventions.
‘A lot of strength’
“It takes a lot of strength for someone to admit to having a mental health problem but having done so they need to engage with their treatment for it to be successful,” Enright says. “Often when someone gets into treatment they find they forget what the clinician has told them. They either get way too much information – that they can’t retain – or none at all. They are given little education about the medications they’ve been prescribed and many stop taking them. As things stand, one in five patients typically cancel or miss appointments and around half drop out of care completely.”
Missed appointments
The company’s initial markets are
Ireland
and the UK. Enright says in the UK the cost of cancelled and missed appointments within the mental healthcare sector is about £360 million (
509 million) a year.
The aim of the CliniBridge platform is to give patients relevant, personalised information about their condition, medication and therapies in one place on a device they are familiar with.
“If a patient is given breathing exercises to help them deal with panic attacks, for example, an audio track to support them wherever they are and whenever they need it can form part of their particular treatment resource,” Enright says.
“Our system can then analyse if they are using the exercise and how they feel before and after with a view to changes if required. If the dashboard picks up that someone is struggling with their relaxation techniques, automated prompts are sent to help the patient manage the task. But our innovation goes further by accessing the power of ‘silent’ phone data and self-monitoring to predict/anticipate possible deterioration in a patient’s condition between clinical visits.”
HealthBridge Technology has developed its CliniBridge platform in-house at a cost of about € 100,000. The company has received funding from Enterprise Ireland under its Competitive Start Fund, New Frontiers programme and Innovation Voucher scheme and is now looking for external funding to accelerate its growth.
At the moment, the business employs its three founders but Enright says there is an employment target of 10 people by 2017. The next major milestone for the company is a pilot with a UK-based mental health trust in November this year. The company is also looking at the feasibility of partnering with companies producing wearable technologies.
