Elsevier

Internet Interventions

Volume 2, Issue 4, November 2015, Pages 399-409
Internet Interventions

Implementing and up-scaling evidence-based eMental health in Europe: The study protocol for the MasterMind project

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.invent.2015.10.002Get rights and content
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Highlights

  • Up-take of evidence-based eMental health by routine practice is limited.

  • This protocol describes the evaluation of large-scale implementation of iCBT and videoconferencing in routine practice across Europe targeting at 5,230 patients.

  • Multidisciplinary evaluation: reach, clinical effect, acceptability, appropriateness, and sustainability (including costs).

  • Mixed-methods assessing three stakeholders: a) patients, b) healthcare professionals, and c) healthcare organisations.

  • The study will reveal facilitating and hampering factors related to implementation of evidence-based eMental health in routine practice.

Abstract

Background

Depressive disorder is a major societal challenge. Despite the availability of clinically and cost-effective treatments including Internet interventions, the number of patients receiving treatment is limited. Evidence-based Internet interventions promise wide availability and high efficiency of treatments. However, these interventions often do not enter routine mental healthcare delivery at a large scale. The MasterMind project aims to provide insight into the factors that promote or hinder the uptake and implementation of evidence-based Internet interventions by mental healthcare practice. Internet-based Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (iCBT) and videoconferencing facilitating collaborative care (ccVC) will be implemented in routine mental healthcare. The services will be offered to 5230 depressed adults in 15 European regions. The current paper describes the evaluation protocol for this large-scale implementation project.

Design

Current summative evaluation study follows a naturalistic one-group pretest–posttest design and assesses three distinct stakeholders: patients, mental healthcare professionals, and mental healthcare organisations. The Model for Assessment of Telemedicine applications (MAST) will be employed to structure the implementation and evaluation study. The primary focal points of interest are reach, clinical effect, acceptability, appropriateness, implementation costs, and sustainability of the interventions in practice. Mixed-methods are used to provide an understanding of what (quantitative) the implementation projects have achieved and their meaning to various stakeholders (qualitative).

Discussion

The use of Internet interventions in routine practice is limited. MasterMind attempts to bridge the gap between routine practice and effectiveness research by evaluating the implementation of evidence-based Internet interventions for depressive disorders in routine mental healthcare settings in Europe.

Keywords

Depression
Implementation
Up-scaling
Evidence-based
eMental health
Telemedicine
Routine practice
Internet-based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
Videoconferencing

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