Innovations

Innovations

About innovations

What is an Innovation?

MHIN considers a mental health innovation to be a new or different, successful and cost effective way of delivering better mental health care in any part of the world. It could be run by anyone from an NGO, government, or for-profit programme, or a research project to develop and test a new way of working or to adapt an existing method to a new setting. In the interest of promoting evidence-based care, MHIN only uploads innovations that have either completed or plan to complete some form of evaluation. If you would like to have your work included in the database, but aren’t sure whether it qualifies as an innovation, review our assessment criteria below or email us for more information.

To promote evidence-based care, you first need evidence. Unfortunately there are many barriers to accessing evidence, especially from low-resource settings. Some projects simply don’t have the resources necessary to carry out a comprehensive evaluation or to publish in academic journals or to share their experiences online. And even the most well-resourced projects have difficulty ensuring that the information they produce is easily accessible to the people who need it most.

The aim of the Innovations area is to bring together real-world examples of innovative work from around the world, so that members can share ideas and resources, form new connections, get inspired, and ultimately further the cause of translating knowledge into action.

If you are interested in submitting your Innovation, contact the MHIN team using this online form and tell us a little about it. Once we've received some key information about your Innovation, a team member will be in touch to assist you with next steps.

MHIN aims to be inclusive, providing a platform for members to learn from one another’s experiences. However, in order for the Innovation database to remain useful, some selection criteria are applied. Each submission undergoes an internal screening by at least two MHIN team members before being transferred to an expert affiliate for review. At each step, the submissions are rated on relevance to site audience and quality of evidence.

 

Reviewers take into consideration the limitations of the local context and possible contribution to the field, when making their assessments. However, submissions that cannot demonstrate that some form of evaluation is at least planned or underway (if not already complete) will not be accepted.

 

Even if you do not have a specific innovation to share, you can still develop an organization profile to showcase the work that your organization is doing in the field of mental health or a related area.

Lightbulb