Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT)

image showing apps on a smartphone

We're working with NHS England to identify and assess digitally enabled therapies that:

Are you the developer of a product suitable for the programme?

Submit your product

 

 Have you developed a digital technology suitable for people with anxiety disorders and depression? Let us know.

What is IAPT?

Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) services provide evidence-based psychological therapies to people with anxiety disorders and depression.

We will assess digitally enabled therapies for anxiety, depression and medically unexplained symptoms which offer the potential to expand these services further.

What is digitally enabled therapy?

Therapy content delivered online or through mobile applications which allows learning to be achieved through patient self-study. This is reinforced and supported by trained therapists.

What are we looking for? 

Digital treatments that meet all of the following criteria:

  • treat one of the 
    • depression
    • generalised anxiety disorder
    • social anxiety disorder
    • panic disorder
    • agoraphobia
    • post-traumatic stress disorder
    • health anxiety (hypochondriasis)
    • specific phobia
    • obsessive-compulsive disorder
    • body dysmorphic disorder
    • irritable bowel syndrome
    • chronic fatigue syndrome
    • medically unexplained symptoms not otherwise specified.
  • use a treatment method with content that follows our guidance
  • can be delivered as part of a blended model of care, supported by an IAPT therapist
  • treat adults
  • have at least one randomised control trial available for the condition being assessed
  • is supplied by an organisation committing to keep ownership and responsibility to maintain and update the digital therapy technology.

  Eligibility and prioritisation criteria

How do we assess the treatments?

The assessment will include:

The assessment outcome will be presented in an IAPT assessment briefing (IAB) to a panel of experts with clinical mental health, health economic and data analysis backgrounds. There will also be service user representation. They will use the IAB to make one of three recommendations:

  • can be routed to testing in practice in IAPT services
  • should not be routed to testing in practice
  • needs further development.

  Frequently asked questions

  Process and methods statement

Evaluating in practice

If your product is assessed as needing further development, you will be eligible to apply for funding to complete this work. (This is currently subject to NHS England approval - confirmation expected in summer 2017). NHS England will lead on the evaluating in practice and further development projects.

Data on the performance of digitally enabled therapies evaluated in practice will be collected. The expert panel will use this to evaluate performance. The panel will decide if the technology should be available to all IAPT services, or if further development or evaluation is required. They decide based on performance, cost and technical features of the product.

  Assessment process

We welcome submissions from developers who want their products assessed for the programme. Contact the team at iapt@nice.nhs.uk.