RAIDPlus at Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust

Background and aims

Annually, 25000 people access mental health crisis care services across Birmingham and Solihull, but crisis care pathways are disconnected and difficult to access. This created large demands on services through rising numbers of assessments, therefore causing increased pressure on acute care.

Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust (BSMHFT) collaborated with Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, Midlands and Lancashire commissioning support unit, telefonica alpha, West Midlands academic health science network, West Midlands ambulance service and West Midlands police, to develop advanced technologies, services and pathways of care through the RAIDPlus project.

Solution

RAIDPlus was developed as an innovative technology to reduce the incidence and intensity of mental health crisis, using predictive analysis to ensure people experiencing mental ill-health were supported towards their recovery. The RAIDPlus project is addressing challenges by developing:

• A demand and capacity dashboard to capture real-time data on patient flow and optimise bed and staff availability
• A predictive algorithm, using different data sources, to identify patients who are at greatest risk of experiencing a mental health crisis
• RAIDPlus crisis co-ordination centre, the ‘hub’ for information gathered from new RAIDPlus technologies, brought together in one central location

Outcomes and benefits

The RAIDPlus model has successfully incorporated six years of clinical data from the Trust’s electronic health record, to provide an overall indication of a patient’s risk of experiencing a mental health crisis. 

Although RAIDPlus is a live innovation project, its products have undergone evaluation which has identified that:

• Clinicians were able to prevent a flagged crisis, manage their caseloads and identify patients that may have been lost in the system
• Clinicians are able to use crisis prediction as part of standard practice

Additional information

You can find out more about RAIDPlus by accessing  Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust article.

You can find out more about RAIDPlus and its outcomes by accessing The NHS Mental Health Improvement Chapter.