Improving psychiatric diagnosis in primary care with the Mental Health Assessment Tool (MHAT) - BC-908

Genre de projet: Recherche
Discipline(s) souhaitée(s): Médecine, Sciences de la vie, Psychologie, Sciences sociales et humaines
Entreprise: Harrison Healthcare
Durée du projet: Plus d’un an
Date souhaitée de début: Dès que possible
Langue exigée: Anglais
Emplacement(s): Vancouver, BC, Canada; Calgary, AB, Canada; Remote, Canada
Nombre de postes: 1
Niveau de scolarité désiré: DoctoratRecherche postdoctorale
Ouvert aux candidatures de personnes inscrites à un établissement à l’extérieur du Canada: No

Au sujet de l’entreprise: 

Harrison Healthcare is a primary healthcare company dedicated to disease prevention and management. Our mission is to enhance client health through innovation, excellence, and compassionate care.

With centres in Vancouver and Calgary, our multidisciplinary team includes family physicians, nurse practitioners, registered nurses, exercise physiologists, dietitians, and lab technicians collaborate to create personalized care plans tailored to each client's needs. We also support our clients by educating, navigating, and advocating for their healthcare needs. By combining advanced technology with scientifically validated methods, we set new standards in primary care to achieve the best health results for our clients.

Veuillez décrire le projet.: 

Poor mental health results in 500,000 Canadians missing work each week, costing the Canadian economy $51 billion a year. With the demand for mental health services reaching all-time highs, primary care providers (PCPs) are frequently tasked with identifying, diagnosing, and treating individuals with mental health difficulties. However, PCPs often struggle with limited time, resources, and expertise, resulting in high misdiagnosis rates.

In response, Harrison Healthcare has developed the Mental Health Assessment Tool (MHAT): a secure, online application aimed at helping PCPs make accurate psychiatric diagnoses. MHAT starts with a broad screen of 25 of the most prevalent mental health conditions and uses decision algorithms to efficiently adapt to the patient's answers and conduct an in-depth analysis based on endorsed symptoms. Once completed, MHAT generates a comprehensive report that highlights the mental health conditions patients are likely to experience and provides the necessary information for conducting a thorough differential diagnosis, thereby enhancing diagnostic accuracy and significantly saving PCPs time.

Although MHAT has shown promising results in pilot studies across our healthcare centres, it has not been sysematically examined. Our project therefore aims to rigorously evaluate the psychometric properties of MHAT using patients from our healthcare centres. Specifically, the research will involve comparing MHAT results to gold-standard semi-structured psychiatric interviews and dimensional measures of psychopathology. Our goal is to ensure that MHAT reliably and accurately identifies the mental health conditions experienced by healthcare patients, thereby establishing it as a critical tool PCPs can use to streamline the mental health diagnostic process and provide better treatment to those suffering from mental health difficulties.

Expertise ou compétences exigées: 

Graduate Training in Mental Health:
• Completion of graduate coursework in psychopathology and mental health assessment.
• Completion of graduate coursework in statistics; courses in test construction and psychometrics are a plus.
• Supervised experience administering, scoring, and interpreting semi-structured diagnostic interviews and dimensional measures of psychopathology.
• Knowledge of ethical and legal standards in healthcare research.

Research:
• Extensive experience collecting, processing, and effectively analyzing healthcare data.
• Proficiency using spreadsheets (e.g., Excel, Google Sheets) and statistical software (e.g., SPSS, R, Python) for data analysis.
• Proven track record of presenting research findings at academic conferences and publishing research articles in peer-reviewed journals.
• Experience with grant writing and securing research funding.

Interpersonal:
• Demonstrated ability to work independently and as part of a multidisciplinary team.
• Effective communication skills for collaboration with healthcare professionals and communicating research findings.
• Strong organizational and project management skills.

Nice to Have:
• Experience conducting mental health assessments and/or treatments within primary care.
• Familiarity with tele-health practices and technologies.