Why?
The road to market needs to be significantly shorter for new mental health solutions to reach people in need in a timely manner. More and more digital mental health solutions are being created, but they need support in order to enter the market faster. There is an urgent need for standardized testing and validation to ensure quality and ethical standards created worldwide.
What?
We are creating a proper process pipeline for digital mental health solutions, including validation and testing tools, from creation to market. We propose a new, transparent product validation protocol that would significantly shorten the time to market.
How?
Our first step was to create an overview of the current mental health innovation ecosystem, to better understand what and how has already been created. By mapping this we now have a better idea of what data has already been and needs to be collected, in order to ensure consistency throughout the ecosystem.
Now, we are leading the creation of a cross-institutional pipeline for mental health innovation certification, to ensure that digital mental health solutions that make it to market are validated, expert quality and transparent.
In the testing phase, we will propose a more lean evaluation format, eliminating the need for a large amount of time and resources needed for initial tests of new mental health solutions. Our proposal is either a) optimization of just-in-time adaptive interventions through micro studies or b) through collecting patient reported outcome + experience measures or c) other self-reported measures to evaluate that the interventions people are using are having the effect they’re supposed to have.
This standardized evaluation format will be available for all mental health innovators and those approving the new solutions. Our aim with this process innovation is to ensure that all new digital mental health solutions maintain high standards and quality.
What does this mean for Estonia?
Estonia is in a crisis as it is lacking the mental health resources it needs.
As a result of having a proper process pipeline set up in Estonia, we can ensure that quality, evidence-based digital mental health solutions, aligned with EU and global standards, can enter the market and reach those in need in a timely manner. More ambitiously, the process pipeline can be exported and used for new mental health solutions market access in other countries.
