Norse Impact – Continuous digital care in mental health

Mental health issues is an important challenge to population well-being and productivity in Western societies. The World Health Organization estimates an annual loss of 50 million work years due to anxiety and depression alone. Traditional ways of delivering care, based on face-to-face interactions, are not sustainable in the future. We need innovate technology to help people with mental health and substance abuse problems better. Patients and practitioners emphasize the need for personalized digital interventions. The consortium behind NorseImpact includes Helse Førde, Norse Feedback AS, St.Olavs Hospital, Helse Stavanger, Sunnfjord kommune, Molde kommune, Helse Møre og Romsdal, Sykehusinnkjøp, Universities and Colleges, We will develop accessible, safe and useful data-driven health technology and improve care. Digital tools must be available to patients outside of regular physical treatment settings, before, during, and after treatment. NorseImpact will use patient-reported data to deliver personalized digital tools to the patients to enhance the effects of the treatments they are part of. The project starts early summer 2024 and lasts for four years. During the first year we will start developing the safe and user-friendly technology and launch the participatory research projects with two young groups: one at risk for psychoses and one misusing drugs. These are particularly important people to engage in treatment and important proof-of-concept. This is what future healthcare services look like: an integrated service flow that includes traditional physical meetings, digital treatment resources, and user-initiated components, all personalized based on the patient's self-reported data.

The current model of mental health service delivery cannot meet the population needs. Users, healthcare, and policymakers state needs for new digital tools to help the users more and better – in their homes. Our pre-project stakeholder involvement established the need for digital clinical interventions to be personalized to each individual. Consequently, they need to build on real-time patient-reported data. Service users and health professionals need digital interventions to enhance patients’ mental health literacy, insight, and coping skills, to empower them as precision health service users. The proposed innovation project – Norse Impact – is driven by these needs. Industry- and healthcare partners have formed a consortium with stakeholder networks and regulatory/commercialization experts to implement a responsible research and innovation (RRI) project from development to commercialization. First, we ensure that the participatory framework of RRI establishes ethical controls, participation and responsive practice throughout project phases. Second, we use already implemented Norse Feedback data-streams from consenting patients to recognize needs patterns using eXplainable AI and ML methods. We develop software for automatic classification of real-time patient needs to trigger interventions, and a user-interface for safe delivery. Third, we develop 10 trial digital interventions for two hard-to-reach young patient populations. We use a person-based mHealth agile development framework to balance data security and validity with a modern digital media experience. Fourth, we test the effectiveness and safety of the digital interventions for regulatory approvals. Fifth, partner procurement and commercialization experts guide the implementation of the value realization strategy for all stakeholders. Incoming partners test and distribute additional digital interventions on the platform to specific groups of patients based on real-time analyses of Norse Feedback data.