The National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health

During the summer of 2003 Claromentis was implemented by the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (NCCMH), one of seven collaborating centres established by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) to develop clinical guidance for the NHS.

The NCCMH is a joint venture between the British Psychological Society’s Centre for Outcomes Research and Effectiveness (CORE) and the Royal College of Psychiatrists' College Research Unit (CRU) and has been in operation since April 2001.

The NCCMH develops six clinical guidelines on the management and treatment of mental health conditions at any one time. It takes approximately two years to develop a guideline.

As Catherine Pettinari PhD, Senior Centre Project Manager for the NCCMH explains:

“The Claromentis document management system is now used to facilitate the exchange of information between approximately 20 NCCMH staff across 2 sites and between members of each guideline’s development group. Each group is a multidisciplinary group of approximately 15 members, including clinicians, academic experts, and people with experience of the condition, supported by the NCCMH staff”.

“Since the NCCMH exists to produce clinical guidelines, then the successful and accurate management of information exchange is critical”.

Nigel Davies, Business Development Manager for Claromentis, explained that “the implementation had several challenges that Claromentis was ideal for. It’s ease of use, and requirements for only a browser on the users PC, meant that it could be taken up efficiently and quickly by an extremely diverse group of users”.

Catherine Pettinari explained how the team had selected Claromentis:

“The NCCMH chose to use the Claromentis system for several reasons:

1. good website with clear information about how the system worked and what advantages it could offer us;
2. Prompt response for further information;
3. good presentation by HDIS staff of the system and
4. pricing structure for registered charities”.

John Stringer, Claromentis Trainer, visited the NCCMH to provide administrator training and was able to get several development requests, specific to the needs of NCCMH, into the product line within a matter of weeks. “after a period of conventional check-in and check-out updates within aggregated documents, the NCCMH teams needed a method for final comments by the team on each guideline. We were able to develop a new application ‘Discuss’, and implement it as part of a workflow solution, which met their needs precisely. Now documents can be converted on the fly to HTML, and authorised users can comment not just on the text but on other comments”.

As Catherine Pettinari explained : “We requested several new additions to the system both before and during implementation of the system. We are very happy with the response from HDIS staff. We would recommend HDIS to anyone!”

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