About i-HealthDesk
This project could potentially go to huge scales and reach millions of Farsi speaking and Bangla people suffering from mild to moderate mental health disorders, and live in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Iran, Bangladesh and Bengal State of India. In long term, next phases of this project could reach millions of people across various cultures and languages around the globe.
We envision to collaborate with government and private health sector to roll out our service through public health and health education sector.
THE CUSTOMER PROBLEMS
Mental health services in many regions of the world is underserviced, underutilized and poorly accessed. This project aims to dramatically improve access, enhance affordability, reduce burden of mental disorders’ stigma and improve mental health outcome of most disadvantaged people across the globe. We use an innovative approach in delivering online, high quality, culturally competent mental health education, assessment and treatment modalities in various languages.
Potential clients are some of the most disadvantaged Farsi & Bangla speaking groups in Tajikistan (low income country), Afghanistan (low income country) Iran (middle income country), Bangladesh (low income country) and India as well as expatriates of those countries across the world. The suffering from mental health disorders in target populations is enormous. Number of years lost due to mental disorders (DALYs) per 100,000 populations in Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Iran are 2531 years, 3527 years and 5457 years respectively.
The number of psychiatrist and psychologists per 100,000 populations in Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Iran are almost 5, less than 1, and 7 respectively compared to the situation with the number of psychologists and psychiatrists in a high-income country e.g. Denmark, nearly 90 per 100,000 population (see Mental Health Atlas 2014 -country profiles).
EVIDENCES SUPPORTING THIS PROJECT
Firstly, there is a great deal of scientific research highlighting the huge burden of mental health illness globally, as well as target groups for this project (see WHO Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP)).
Secondly, a large body of scientific evidence demonstrated that high quality services for mild to moderate mental health disorders, could be delivered efficiently and effectively via internet and related technologies. The benefits of e-mental health proved to be convenience, flexibility, low cost to patients, filling gaps to current face to face methods, saves practitioners time to focus on more complex mental health conditions, and overcoming stigma barrier (see e-Mental health: A guide for GPs; The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners & Research evidence for Bluepage self-help programs)
Our story
Our team has come together to address a great challenge of our time: mental wellbeing
We saw a real need to high-quality mental health service, accessible to everyone, at affordable cost, and stigma-free.
i-HealthDesk was created to achieve this goal.
Every life equally deserves to feel happy. We strongly believe improving the mental wellbeing of every single person in the world would lead to more peace, harmony and happiness. i-HealthDesk has taken a significant step towards this goal and this is just the beginning of our fascinating journey.
Founding Team
Abbas Haghshenas
My vision is a world with equal access to high-quality mental wellbeing services for all.
I have experience in developing and running start-up projects, conducting qualitative and quantitative/mixed method research projects. Interested and experience in mental health in general practice and very experienced and competent family physician in all spectrum of medicine, in many parts of Australia.
Health Management, Primary Care, Mental health, Research and Teaching, Business Development, Bilingual and Bi-cultural.
MD, PhD, FACRRM, Cert (MH)MD, PhD, FACRRM, Cert (MH).
Mohsen Ghaffari
He received two master’s degree in “Health Economic” and “Business Management” and dedicated his time and energy to research and innovation in relevant interdisciplinary fields over the last ten years.
Mohsen believes that public health improvement as an integrated goal requires more cooperations and collaborations among people and communities. He hopes iHealthDesk will contribute to “mental health for all” regardless of their socioeconomic status, residential remoteness, language, stigma or other constraints with the help of plenty of experts in a wide range of science areas.
Elahe Khorasani
It has been my lifelong ambition to make supportive and caring health environment based on variety evidence-based materials for all people beyond their socioeconomic or geographic status, where each individual feels heard in talking about barriers to find right services.
My fields of interest are digital health, health economic evaluations and health policy. I think these fields enhance health system and access to the best choice of health care services. In recent years, I had the opportunity to be involved in creative research projects related to mentioned subjects. My passionate about improving access to mental cares anytime and anywhere lead to form the iHealthDesk start up.
I am currently Ph.D. candidate of Pharmacoeconomics and Pharmaceutical Administration with M.Sc. of Healthcare Management and focus on the content development as a co-founder of iHealthDesk team.
Mahan Mohammadi
I am passionate about sharing my almost one-decade experience and knowledge in different health settings such as hospitals, universities, and insurance companies to remove the access barriers of health services especially mental health services. That’s why I have tried so hard on the iHealthDesk to make mental health services available for all people even those in developing countries and remote areas, utilizing the IT technology. Outside of the project, I am a member of the environment and population health center as a Ph.D. candidate and working on mental health in disasters which connect me to my BSc and MSc in Health Services Management background.