SLaM shortlisted for Health Service Journal awards

South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust has made the final shortlist in two categories of this year's Health Service Journal awards.

The awards were hotly contested with over 300 more entries than last year. The SLaM projects that made it through were a brain scan to detect the early signs of Alzheimer's disease, which made the shortlist in the Improving Care with Technology category.  And the Empowering Parents Empowering Communities (EPEC) project, which has been shown to improve the mental health of children in urban areas and was shortlisted in the Enhancing Quality and Efficiency in Services for Children and Young People category.

The brain scan is an advanced computer programme that automatically and accurately detects the early signs of Alzheimer's disease from a routine clinical brain scan.  Early diagnosis of Alzheimer's is clinically difficult and patients with the early signs are frequently not treated until their symptoms worsen - often many months or years later.  The new scan can return 85% accurate diagnostic results in under 24 hours and is currently being field tested in SLaM's three memory clinics.

Andy Simmons, Biomedical Research Centre for Mental Health¹ said: "Being recognised like this helps us to shout about our new technology, which has the potential to improve medical practice and benefit thousands of Alzheimer's sufferers, and their carers, across the world."

The EPEC project targeted hard-to-reach families in Southwark as children living in inner city areas tend to experience twice the national rate of severe childhood mental health problems than average.  However, effective, early intervention - particularly by parents - can lead to dramatic improvements and can prevent mental health problems from developing in later life.  

EPEC is a community-based project that trained 24 local parents so they could go on and teach other parents the skills of effective parenting.  The aim was for peer-led parenting courses to appeal to hard-to-reach groups as they are run by local people in similar circumstances. Over 350 local parents attended courses over two years and the results, evaluated by King's College London, show significant improvements in child behaviour problems - improvements that compare favourably with outcomes achieved by professional therapists.

Carolyn Penney, Specialist Trainer, EPEC: said: "This shortlisting is a significant step toward our aim of helping large numbers of vulnerable children up and down the UK.

"EPEC is an intervention that improves child mental health problems. To help as many young people as we can, we need as many healthcare professionals to know about our approach as possible.  This shortlisting is the perfect way of generating interest among healthcare professionals."

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For more information contact Russell Guthrie, Communications Manager, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust: 020 3228 2621 or russell.guthrie@slam.nhs.uk

¹ The BRC for Mental Health is based at the Maudsley Hospital and is a partnership between King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM).  It was selected through open competition by an international expert selection panel and is distinguished as a leader in scientific translation. Its purpose is to accelerate the translation of fundamental biomedical research into clinical practice for patient benefit. One way it will achieve this is through the early adoption of new insights in technologies, techniques and treatments for health improvement.  It is the only biomedical research centre specialising in mental health in the UK.