The mental health (MH) dashboard: A tool for improving the EU countries' capacity to analyse MH data

Giovanni CORRAO1,2,3, Francesca IEVA4,5, Laura SAVARE'2,4,5, Giulia CAGGIU1,2,6, Claudia CONFLITTI1,2,6, Matteo MONZIO COMPAGNONI1,2, Joint Action IMPLEMENTAL CONSORTIUM

1Unit of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Public Health, Department of Statistics and Quantitative Methods, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
2National Centre for Healthcare Research & Pharmacoepidemiology, Milan, Italy, Milan, Italy
3Directorate General for Welfare and Health, Lombardy Region, Milan, Italy
4MOX - Laboratory for Modeling and Scientific Computing, Department of Mathematics, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy
5CHDS - Center for Health Data Science, Human Technopole, Milan, Italy
6Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, ASST Lecco, Lecco, Italy

INTRODUCTION

Given the need of sound monitoring and evaluation programs for mental healthcare (MHC), appropriate data collection and use of indicators are essential to measure and improve quality of MHC. Thus, we aimed to design and implement a dashboard for MH indicators for a standardized monitoring and evaluation of MHC pathways provided by the health services (HS) of JA ImpleMENTAL countries.

METHODS

A detailed survey was sent to JA countries to understand the availability of health electronic records in various national Mental Health Information Systems (MHIS). Parallelly, research in literature for MH indicators was made. A list of MH indicators was proposed.

RESULTS

13 European countries have answered to MHIS-Questionnaire (MHIS-Q), giving an overview on MHIS (information flows, coding systems, type of interventions, etc). Collection on electronic records of MH data is highly fragmented.

A list of MH indicators was set up and discussed in a consensus workshop (June 2023). Answers to MHIS-Q were used to understand how data available in countries’ MHIS fit proposed indicators. A minimum set of MH indicators monitoring care delivery (prevalence/incidence, MH service availability) and evaluating MHC quality (Accessibility, Appropriateness, Continuity, Mortality) was agreed.

For a standardized data collection, a manual for building indicators (defining indicators, their calculation, between-countries-harmonization, variables list, processing details) was developed; data extraction assisted. The research platform for MH indicators (based on R open-sourced code) is in testing phase and being implemented (first demo available). By June 2024, final version of dashboard will be installed. Stratification of MH indicators by mental disorders, age, sex, education, will be implemented.

CONCLUSIONS

This dashboard, using as input the common minimum database, guarantees a standardized and automatized calculation of MH indicators in JA countries, following shared and rigorous rules for data collection and processing. A platform providing timely, relevant, comparable MH data.