Design and implementation of clinical decision support systems in mental health helpline Services: A systematic review

Background: Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSSs) are electronic systems used to conduct assessments based on patient characteristics and to offer treatment recommendations for clinicians to consider during their decision-making processes. CDSSs are needed by mental health helpline services to optimise service delivery for clients and counsellors, while also collecting the data needed for the administration of the service. The aim of this systematic review was to provide a comprehensive overview of the design and implementation of CDSSs in mental health helpline services, to identify current issues in their design and implementation, and to provide recommendations that may address any identified issues.

Materials and methods: Keywords related to mental health, helplines and CDSS were searched in three databases in April 2022 and September 2023. In total, 21 articles published between 1987 and 2023 met the inclusion criteria.

Results: The objectives of the mental health helplines services included in this study included suicide risk reduction, diagnosis, treatment and monitoring of mental health disorders, and support of clinicians or counsellors in making better and more accurate decisions by incorporating real-time data analysis. All included studies demonstrated co-design activities, however, the level and degree of end-user involvement differed across the studies. The factors that impact CDSS implementation success depend on the design and implementation approach, user experience and context. CDSS evaluations in the included studies assessed reliability, utility, user friendlessness, cost-effectivenessand participant satisfaction. Few studies considered data privacy and integration issues.

Conclusion: More interactive methods should be adopted during the design of CDSSs for mental health helpline services. Increased frequency and intensity of user participation in system design, that goes beyond providing feedback on research materials, enables user opinions to be fully understood and addressed. Comprehensive frameworks should be developed to guide requirements gathering, system design and system evaluation practices. These factors are interrelated and may impact implementation success. From the outset therefore, the design of a CDSS in the mental health helpline domain should consider the full system development cycle.