Early psychosis diagnosis tool launched in three major cities

Photo credit (L-R): Dr Zia Katshu – Clinical Associate Professor and Consultant Psychiatrist. Michael Naylor-Eade – Senior Information Analyst. Melanie Lafanechere – Programme Manager for EPICare. Clement Chinaza Owuamalam - Senior Information Analyst.
Photo credit (L-R): Dr Zia Katshu – Clinical Associate Professor and Consultant Psychiatrist. Michael Naylor-Eade – Senior Information Analyst. Melanie Lafanechere – Programme Manager for EPICare. Clement Chinaza Owuamalam - Senior Information Analyst.

A team of multidisciplinary Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust staff have contributed to the launch of a new national digital platform that helps clinicians track information related to early psychosis care.

The Early Psychosis Informatics into Care (EPICare) study, is a patient registry platform. Developed by the NIHR’s Mental Health Translational Research Collaboration (MH-TRC), it tracks information related to patient care. EPICare will hold relevant data to help deliver better care to over two thousand patients living with psychosis.

Every year in England, around 12,000 people experience a first episode of psychosis. Psychosis is a form of severe mental illness that can have long term, devastating personal, family, and societal impacts. People with psychosis can hear voices, have confused thoughts and lack motivation.

EPICare has been initially launched in Birmingham, Nottinghamshire and Cambridgeshire, with plans to expand to Greater Manchester and North London later this year. The project team worked in collaboration with Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) groups and clinicians to create a series of onboarding videos to support user engagement and education. The platform will allow clinical teams and researchers to identify blind spots in access to care. It informs patients and clinicians of how much progress a person is making and the automated system reminds users about treatment options. It notifies users of milestones they need to achieve and measures their progress.

Dr Zia Katshu, Lead for the Nottingham site and cognition outcomes, emphasises that:

“EPICare is the product of genuine partnership between people with lived experience of psychosis. A partnership with their families and carers, frontline clinicians, and researchers. It offers, for the first time within Early Intervention in Psychosis (EIP) services, a quick, easy-to-use, and reliable way to assess cognitive functioning - a key factor influencing day-to-day wellbeing, recovery, and quality of life."

The EPICare study is a flagship initiative of the Mental Health Translational Research Collaboration Mission (MH-TRC Mission).

For more information

Visit the NIHR website