The COVID-19 pandemic poses unprecedented challenges in mental health. At eGRiST, we’re working as hard as ever to help organisations address these challenges. We’ll be continuing to support organisations and clinicians throughout the pandemic, while delivering new features to facilitate better remote care and co-creation of mental health with GRiST, our online mental health decision support system, and myGRiST, our self-assessment service.
Comprehensive mental health and risk assessment – remotely
GRiST is already used by the NHS, private and third sector health and social care providers across the UK and abroad. It enables the detailed assessment and management of mental health and risk, and helps our partners to deliver safe, high-quality care even from a distance.
Limiting physical contact with others is paramount to stopping the spread of the virus, and thus health and care providers find themselves faced with the task of implementing social distancing procedures while minimising the disruption of care to their service users. At the same time, economic difficulties, social isolation and uncertainty mean those with pre-existing mental health conditions are most likely to be adversely affected by the pandemic.
This is a difficult balancing act, especially at a time when mental health services are already under-resourced. Having the right technology can enable clinicians to stay connected with their service users, maintain a high quality service, and minimise the spread of infection by working remotely.
GRiST is a web-based mental health decision support service, accessible through a web browser on any desktop or laptop computer, at any time. Healthcare practitioners use GRiST to undertake comprehensive assessments of a service user’s mental health and wellbeing, including any risks, to produce a care and management plan. As GRiST is fully web-based, other authorised practitioners can view a service user’s record to identify those at high-risk, spot the main risks and contributing factors at a glance, monitor the success of interventions and track progress over time; all remotely and securely.
In addition to facilitating remote care, GRiST also helps us to better understand the impact of the pandemic and resulting isolation on peoples’ mental health, through long-term monitoring.
We’ll be working throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to support practitioners and organisations that use GRiST, as well as delivering improvements to enhance remote care. Some of our plans:
- We’re integrating social networking tools, with video and audio capabilities, with GRiST. This will enable practitioners to conduct secure, remote consultations directly through GRiST.
- myGRiST, our online self-help service, is being further developed and integrated with GRiST, helping service users to stay connected with their care providers and take more control of their mental health. Read more on this below.
myGRiST: a new way to connect service users and care providers
Like GRiST, myGRiST is a web-based service and is accessible at any time, from anywhere, on PCs, laptops, and mobile devices.
Using the same assessment technology as GRiST, myGRiST offers service users short self-assessments called Pathways, each focused on a particular aspect of their mental health and wellbeing. myGRiST then recommends specific interventions or resources, based on the user’s assessment results and other information, which the service user can then use to build their personal action plan.
myGRiST helps service users take more control of their own mental health and stay engaged with mental health services, all from their own home. With a simple and intuitive interface, designed with the range of challenges faced by those with mental health or learning difficulties in mind, myGRiST is intended to be usable for anyone with minimal support.
Machine learning on GRiST’s million mental-health risk evaluations helps identify areas of difficulty for service users and recommend the most relevant and impactful actions for them to take. These actions include directing people to the most appropriate services, advice, or community groups, and we’re working with organisations across the country to build a comprehensive database of resources. myGRiST can be set up for individual organisations and localities so that it can point users to services specific to their own organisations and communities.
Just like GRiST, myGRiST enables users to build up a record, monitoring their mental health and wellbeing over time and helping them track their progress. The two systems are linked so that service users can share their myGRiST assessments with their care network and make them available along with their clinical records. This opens up new opportunities for service users to engage and collaborate with care providers, as well as enabling more frequent and precise monitoring of their mental health.
As well as enabling better co-creation of mental health between service users and care providers, myGRiST is helping people take control of their mental health and intervene early. By enabling people to better understand their mental health, take action to improve it, and directing them to the most appropriate resources, we hope myGRiST can reduce burden on care organisations while improving access to support for vulnerable groups.
Interested in GRiST for your organisation?
If you would like to find out more about GRiST and how it could benefit your organisation and service users, please get in touch with us via: info@egrist.org
You are also welcome to try both the clinical and self-assessment versions of GRiST at www.egrist.org/try-grist and https://www.egrist.org/content/demo-mygrist respectively.
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