About i-HealthDesk
Our innovation lies in creating a digital platform to connect and combine the scientific and technological expertise in a developed country like Australia with community knowledge and cultural insights of local professionals in low and middle income countries, in order to fill in a huge gap in mental health service in low and middle income countries.
This project could potentially go to huge scales and reach millions of people living in low and middle income countries, and migrants living in high income countries. In the 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
ental 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)
