SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT FOR SCREENING AND DIAGNOSIS OF MENTAL DISORDERS IN A FAMILY MEDICINE PROGRAM

Introduction and Objective: Mental disorders (MD) are very prevalent in primary health care and represent a high cost to society. In spite of this, they remain mostly under diagnosed and undertreated in this level of care. This precarious situation justifies the development of a software to help family medicine professionals to better diagnosis and treat MD. We will present preliminary results of a prototype created after direct research with primary health care professionals and their demands about mental health. Method: Two family care teams were selected in different cities of São Paulo State. Team members were interviewed to identify their routine with patients. We selected standard mental health questionnaires after extensive literature review. Software functions were defined. A prototype was developed considering the routine apprehended and the selected questionnaires. Results and Conclusions: The software was made available for smartphones and web version. For MD screening, we selected the Self-Reporting Questionnaire (SRQ-20), the Well-being Index (WHO-5) and the frames COOP/WONCA. For MD diagnosis, we selected the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI). The system developed may be used by community health agents, nurses and doctors, with specified functions for each one. Furthermore, the software includes the following functions: automatic retrieval of tests scores; automatic synchronization between the smartphone and the web version, automatic scheduling of patients interviews and alert of patients still not screened. Athough the prototype is still being tested, initial results are very promising for helping family health care professionals to make more precise screening and diagnosis of MD.