ADMiRE ADHD App has the potential to revolutionise clinical care for young people with ADHD in Ireland
In Ireland, one in three young people in child mental health services have ADHD. It is extremely important to treat ADHD effectively as untreated or poorly treated ADHD is associated with a raft of negative health and socio-economic outcomes. There are very effective medicines available to treat ADHD, which significantly reduces these negative outcomes and improve quality of life. Despite available effective treatment, ADHD is often poorly managed due to a lack of structured, evidence-based protocols in clinical services. One of the biggest concerns is that children who are on ADHD medication in Ireland are not always monitored as well as they should be. This means that ADHD medicines are not always as effective as they could be, nor as safe as they should be.
The current solution to this is ADMiRE, a paper-based protocol for the assessment and treatment of children with ADHD. While it has proved very successful in terms of clinical outcomes and service user satisfaction, the paper system is administratively intensive for clinicians, limiting for adhering to required physical health monitoring, and it is difficult to collect quality data from parents, guardians, and teachers.
However, a promising solution developed “ADMiRE ADHD” – A novel app to improve management of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder has been developed by several ADHD specialists as well as digital health and health research experts within the HSE, TCD and DCU. The academic project lead is Prof Jane McGrath, Psychiatry (TCD/HSE) with lead Community Digital Health support from Niamh Sneyd (HSE).
Speaking about the collaborative and innovative development, Professor Jane McGrath commented: “The ADMiRE ADHD App has the potential to revolutionise clinical care for young people with ADHD in Ireland”. The ADMiRE ADHD App will be a secure, web-based app that will translate the ADMiRE standardised clinical protocol into one comprehensive digital system for optimal assessment and treatment of young people with ADHD. As such, the project will deliver significant benefits to CAMHS services and, by extension, the care offered to young people. The increased efficiency that will result from use of the app is estimated has the capacity to reduce wait times, increased capacity and reduced service costs.
Through automated online requests to parents, guardians and teachers, there will be a significant improvement in the quality and accuracy of reporting in between clinic visits. At such visits, clinicians will be supported through online prompts that deliver a comprehensive, evidence-based clinical review for treatment of ADHD. Complimenting this, pre-programmed ‘red flags’ will also alert clinicians to risks identified by the data analysis supported by the platform.
The project is being funded by the Public Service Innovation Fund 2023, (Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform).
