An odyssey of sirens, sorcery and shipwreck for mental health informatics

Drawing on his experiences in developing a clinical decision support system for mental health risk and safety management, Dr Buckingham delivered a presentation discussing the problems of translating health informatics research into clinical practice.

Attendees at the Health Informatics Society of Ireland conference

Delivered at the Health Informatics Society of Ireland conference in November, the presentation explained the general issues involved with adopting clinical decision support systems and how the National Health Service has attempted to address them in the UK. 

Insights into strategic issues came partly from Buckingham's participation in two separate committees advising the UK Department of Health on risk informatics. Primarily, however, the focus was on the process of taking a clinical decision support system from the early idea stages right through to clinical implementation within mental health services, as has been achieved with the GRaCE project, which is actively used by clinicians throughout the NHS. Anecdotal examples illustrated the general lessons that needed to be learned, and an international perspective came from Buckingham's involvement with European, American and Australian projects.

This dissemination of knowledge is essential to overcome the problems faced in integrating informatics systems into clinical care, and increasing the uptake of revolutionary technologies like GRaCE.