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Health services for Child and Adolescent Psychiatr.. (eCAP)
Health services for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
(eCAP)
Start date: Oct 1, 2015,
End date: Sep 30, 2018
PROJECT
FINISHED
Description (EN): The need for psychiatric services for children and adolescents generally exceeds service capacity. The main problems are insufficient numbers of psychiatrists/specialists, long waiting times, limited capacity among primary care services and a heavy travel burden for both patients and their family, and outpatient specialists.The aim of the eCAP project is to develop diagnosis, consultation, supervision, treatment and collaboration between professionals by using modern information technology - videoconferencing (VC) systems. Services for distant multidisciplinary consultations in child psychiatry and clinical supervision, as well as booking systems for these services will be developed. The Development and Wellbeing Assessment (DAWBA: http://www.dawba.com/), a computerised structured instrument for gathering diagnostic data from families, teachers and young people themselves) will also be implemented.The services will increase the knowledge of local multidisciplinary experts about mental health and mental disorders of children and adolescents. Both preventive work and treatment close to the child and his/her developmental environments (school, daycare etc.) will be supported. The service mentioned above will use VC to bridge the distance between specialists, primary care, GPs, schools, patients and their families.The expected results are improved and more equal access to timely outpatient psychiatry services, specialist evaluation and treatment according to best practice, improved capacity in primary care and more rational use of specialist services. One of the project’s outcomes will be an operating model resulting from a comprehensive evaluation of the implementations in the participating countries that can be disseminated to other regions. Expected Results (EN): Awareness and attitudes among health professionals towards the use of eHealth technologies Expected Outputs (EN): The main result of the project will be that children and young people with mental health problems, and their families, will receive better and more timely care nearer to home. Developmental environments of children can be better involved in the treatment process by offering consultation and supervision to teachers or daycare workers.Assuming we demonstrate effectiveness, the eCAP service (including remote diagnosis and VC consultations) will be rolled out and implemented on a large scale in the partner countries, providing common tools and strategies for the challenge of providing mental health services not only to the younger population but also to their families, child health services, school personnel and GPs.In addition, through a special focus on transnational learning, innovative models addressing public service provision, tailored to the needs of each partner, will be developed and later made available to other interested parties for future use. We also seek to develop, conduct and collocate a common evaluation instrument that will be used for further assessment and development of best practice in service.The introduction of the eCAP service will, among other things, contribute to an increased use of technology in public services working to improve child and adolescent mental health, first of all by the implementing partners, and secondly by partners following dissemination of the experiences of the eCAP partners. This all require a positive contribution to the awareness and attitudes among Health Professionals towards the use of eHealth technology.A successful implementation of the eCAP service and a normalization of the use of technology can also contribute to increased use of technology in other areas of the health care sector.