BackgroundRegional networking between services that provide mental health care in Brazil’s decentralized public health system is challenging, partly due to the simultaneous existence of services managed by municipal and state authorities and a lack of efficient and transparent mechanisms for continuous and updated communication between them. Since 2011, the Ribeirao Preto Medical School and the XIII Regional Health Department of the Sao Paulo state, Brazil, have been developing and implementing a web-based information system to facilitate an integrated care throughout a public regional mental health care network.Case presentationAfter a profound on-site analysis, the structure of the network was identified and a web-based information system for psychiatric admissions and discharges was developed and implemented using a socio-technical approach. An information technology team liaised with mental health professionals, health-service managers, municipal and state health secretariats and judicial authorities. Primary care, specialized community services, general emergency and psychiatric wards services, that comprise the regional mental healthcare network, were identified and the system flow was delineated. The web-based system overcame the fragmentation of the healthcare system and addressed service specific needs, enabling: detailed patient information sharing; active coordination of the processes of psychiatric admissions and discharges; real-time monitoring; the patients’ status reports; the evaluation of the performance of each service and the whole network. During a 2-year period of operation, it registered 137 services, 480 health care professionals and 4271 patients, with a mean number of 2835 accesses per month. To date the system is successfully operating and further expanding.ConclusionWe have successfully developed and implemented an acceptable, useful and transparent web-based information system for a regional mental healthcare service network in a medium-income country with a decentralized public health system. Systematic collaboration between an information technology team and a wide range of stakeholders is essential for the system development and implementation.

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Mental health is one of the areas that involves more attention, since the actions taken within the services network cannot be reduced to closed systems without communication with other systems, but with open, heterogeneous and articulated ones. Thus, a search for new possibilities for the realization of continuous and articulated work between different levels of mental health care network is necessary. Given this context, the main objective of this project is to develop and deploy a web based health information system for patient management in order to perform the monitoring of the flow of patients with mental disorders. To this end, the project will include the use of web technologies such as PHP, HTML, JavaScript and CSS, Database Management System MySQL, and Apache web server. A web based system called SISAM 13, that allows appointments, requests for hospitalizations, hospitalizations and the movement of patients in the public mental health network, providing management reports, was created. Initially, the system was implemented as a pilot, and after 90 days, it came into definitive operation. From November 2012 to October 2014, the system registered 4271 patients, 480 professionals, 1483 schedules appointments, 5938 request for hospitalizations and 3239 hospitalizations. Most origin municipalities of the requests was part of the Regional Health Department XIII (RHD XIII), confirming the adequacy of regionalization. It was found that the high proportion of requests from the mental health specialized services, showed the difficulty of stabilizing patients with mental disorders by these units, showing the lack of organization and coordination with other network services. The network overloading can be justified by the high waiting time for hospitalization, and the bed turnover decrease, damaging the network patients flow. It was shown that the majority of the population treated in hospital admissions was male, between 20 to 39 years, diagnosed with disorders related to the use of psychoactive(s) substance(s) use and length of stay more than or equal to 31 days. The longer length of stay by the compulsory admissions compared with voluntary and involuntary admissions, causes reduction in the bed turnover, reflecting on the entire mental health network. The high proportion of counter references to mental health specialist services can contribute to the continuity of care, however, it was found that only 54,92 % of the discharges were counter referenced. The low level use of the appointments features along with the low number of user actions by requesters, suggests the improvement and / or inclusion of features in the system for outpatient services. The increase of 13,16% in the total number of actions from one year to another can be explained by the incorporation of the system in the daily working process, since users of the system were seen and recognized as an integral part in the system development, allowing their engagement in its use and improvement.

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