More research on mental health!

- We will contribute to an agile development of digital mental health services through quality assurance and examination of the services in an early testing phase, says Professor Anne Granstrøm Ekeland from the Norwegian Centre for E-health Research.

She has worked with Health Technology Assessment (HTA) for several years, and explains that early HTA's goal is to produce the necessary knowledge to quality-assure new e-health services before making any implementation decisions.

- We do this while the services are under development so that they can be adjusted to achieve psychological, medical and professional goals. We will contribute to this job through, among other things, process research and qualitative investigations where users also contribute, Professor Ekeland explains.

Need for new knowledge

Although the effects of digital services are well documented, the use of digital services is still limited. New knowledge about health economic effects, strategies for implementation and method assessment (HTA) is needed.

- We are very happy that mental health is given this opportunity. Our goal is to reach more people with treatment, and we hope this will allow us to continue with what we are doing through the Intromat project, says centre manager Tine Nordgreen of Intromat and the University of Bergen. Nordgreen will head the new centre.

Extend use and evaluate effects

The main goal of the centre is to expand the use and impact of digital mental health interventions through research on effectiveness compared to standard treatment, health economic and socio-economic effects, strategies for implementation and early Health Technology Assessment.

The centre will be based on existing digital interventions and will research and develop methods and models for health and socio-economic analysis, service design and implementation, and method assessment.