The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence have launched a mobile app for iPhone and Android users. The free app contains full text of all NICE guidance (currently 760 items), organised by conditions, diseases and public health topics.
I’ve had a quick play this morning on my ElfPhone and the app looks quite nice. The search doesn’t seem to perform quite how I’d expect it to (i.e. it doesn’t search the full-text of the guidance), but the browsing is smooth and the overall look and feel is clean. The font size can be increased for visually impaired users and there’s a ‘night mode’ for those of you who like to read NICE guidance under the bedclothes in the early hours.
I couldn’t find any note-taking functionality in the app, which would have been useful. Perhaps that’s something they will add in a future release so users can annotate their locally saved versions of the guidance.
NICE have also announced new mental health quality standards that are in the pipeline on:
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Anxiety
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Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
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Depression (children and young people)
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Eating disorders (including children)
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Personality disorders (borderline and antisocial)
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Autism (children and young people)
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Conduct disorders (children and young people)
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Self harm (vulnerable groups, children and young people)
Additionally, there are 3 NHS quality standards on cross cutting public health topics, two of which may be relevant to mental health professionals:
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Smoking cessation
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Alcohol (preventing and managing alcohol misuse)
There are existing quality standards on 5 topics relevant to mental health, so readers can see what to expect from these new publications:
- Alcohol dependence and harmful alcohol use
- Dementia
- Depression in adults
- Patient experience in adult NHS services
- Service user experience in adult mental health
