This year’s HTF Code-a-thon event presents a special opportunity for innovators in the mental health space to create solutions and sharpen their skills. Participant teams will come together to generate ideas and crunch code, then pitch their prototypes to judges and peers.
Nearly 19% of Americans suffer from some sort of mental illness; emergency room visits for mental health or substance abuse issues have increased significantly in the past several years. The Code-a-thon offers groups of hackers, health professionals and researchers an exciting environment to design new approaches that engage and empower patients in the recovery process.
With 250 RSVPs (team building reception and code-a-thon), 11 teams, 9 judges, 14 speakers, 10 mentors, and 30 organizers and volunteers the code-a-thon was a great success and we want to thank each and every one of you for your contributions. The weekend long challenge is being followed by a presentation panel of the winning solutions at the HTF Innovation Conference Pathways to Sustainable Health.
General
Specific
San Francisco General Hospital Case Study : Acute Care Support
Within the Psychiatric Emergency Services, there are severe limitations for clinicians when obtaining a comprehensive history from the patient. Patient history is often inaccurate due to the decompensated psychiatric state of the patient. It is also very difficult and time-intensive for clinicians to get a comprehensive view of a patients mental health history, the physician needs to access three separate databases and read through unstructured data to ascertain a recent history. As this complete medical record only exists in the chart, two different disciplines can’t use it at the same time, causing severe workflow backup.
Mental Health Care in California: Painting a Picture
This report by the California Health Care Foundation provides an overview of mental health in California: disease prevalence, suicide rates, the state’s care delivery system, supply and use of treatment providers, and access to care. The report also highlights available quality data and the most recent data on national mental health care spending. Download the report here.
A Complex Case : Public Mental Health Delivery and Financing in California: This report by the California Health Care Foundation provides an overview of how California’s public mental health system services are financed, administered, and delivered. It is offered as background to inform policy discussions about how public mental health services fit within California’s overall public health care system. Download the report here.
Challenges of Integrated Care Model
Collaboration of Primary Care Physician with behavioral health professionals (e.g. nurse or social worker).
THE CHALLENGE: low literacy patients. Cognitive impairment due to age or condition.
THE CHALLENGE: this process is influenced by many factors(e.g., poor communication with patient, limited bandwidth of behaviorist).
THE CHALLENGE: Even though behaviorists undergo training for this session, there is significant variability in the offered clinical quality-re-training is often needed.
THE CHALLENGE: to make sure that the clinicians are actually deploying the practices and utilizing access to experts/psychiatrists to address complex scenarios.
Common complaints by behaviorists:
(1) the treatments offered in primary care are not sufficiently good enough for patients; (2) managing complex cases is too hard in 30 minutes; (3) too much paperwork; (4) not enough expert support.
Conceptual Design Approach (25%):
Ability to articulate targeted pain point(s) around problem space and how conceptual designs address these
Implementation Feasibility (25%):
Technical Feasibility (25%)
Creativity and newness of the Idea (10%):
Prototype development stage and Presentation (10%):
Utilization of surveys, datasets and resources provided (5%)