Data collection and analysis are a key part of any evidence-based decision making process. When providers routinely use real-time data on individual care outcomes, it can markedly improve their ability to ensure that the patient is receiving the right care in the right order.
More broadly, there is still much that we don’t know about the mental health of our citizens and the effectiveness of services. Our goal is to expand the traditional surveillance of mental health outcomes, especially for our younger citizens and explore ways to harness technology and “big data” to improve mental health citywide.
Develop new measures and methods to understand mental health needs and priorities.
Enable others to use data to test, adopt, and improve their practices.
Identify, evaluate, and disseminate promising mental health approaches and interventions
Promote citizen owned data
Better data can help to guide our City’s unmet mental health needs. It can enable us to visualize these needs disaggregated by geography or demographic profile, which will allow for better targeting. It can also help us track both the impact of treatment as well as gaps in coverage and quality. Investing in better surveys and research will enable providers to make meaningful comparisons of different approaches for mental health, including cost-benefit analyses.
New technologies can also help create maps to visualize inequities, focus on bottlenecks, access services in real-time, connect residents to care, and troubleshoot problems in community mental health.
A creation of new Mental Health Innovation Lab which will enable better use of information and best practices among partners and providers, and provide necessary technical assistance and support to local service providers and City agencies . The Lab will help drive the use of evidence-based best practices throughout the field and design better methods for getting the data we need, which will lead to more innovative and effective programmes. The Lab will:
