A learning health system for people with severe mental illness: a promise for continuous learning, patient coproduction and more effective care

Abstract

A Learning Health System (LHS) promotes the patient being at the very center of his or her care. Patient coproduction of care in an LHS is enabled by a focus on improving outcomes through the use of tools and visualizations that use the harnessed knowledge obtained from every previous treatment of similar patients. Interest in the concept of LHS is growing, and there are promising results in real-world applications. Almost no research has focused on LHSs for severe mental illness (LHS4SMI). By using a user-centered system design approach, a persona and use-case scenarios were created to illustrate how schizophrenia care could be co-produced in an LHS compared to standard care in a non-LHS. The illustration highlight increased participation through decisions informed by all treatments for all similar patients through the use of user interfaces that support continuous evaluation, increased understanding, compensation for cognitive impairment and participation of next of kin in the care process. We propose that an LHS4SMIs like schizophrenia has enormous potential in enabling continuous learning, patient coproduction, and more effective care.