Thalamos provides a practical example of how structured digital workflows can replace paper-based processes, improve the secure sharing of statutory information and give professionals a clearer, real-time view of a patient’s journey. By creating a reliable audit trail and highlighting emerging patterns, the platform can support earlier intervention, better multi-agency working and the use of the least restrictive options.

This article was sponsored by UK Healthcare and Life Sciences Innovation (UKHLSI) member Thalamos.

To find out more about Thalamos, visit: www.thalamos.co.uk

Across mental health services, there is no shortage of commitment or data. Yet the ability to consistently translate that into safe, coordinated and timely care remains constrained by how the system itself is designed.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the delivery of Mental Health Act (MHA) processes.

People subject to the Mental Health Act often move between emergency departments, mental health services, police custody, ambulance services, local authorities and independent providers within the same episode of care. Each part of the pathway may hold different information relevant to risk, legal status, safeguarding or previous intervention.

Decisions are made under pressure, with immediate and profound consequences. Yet the infrastructure supporting those decisions has not kept pace. Information remains fragmented, processes are often manual and visibility of a patient’s journey is limited at the point it matters most.

Across the system, a consistent theme has emerged. Fragmentation, administrative burden and a lack of joined-up data are not peripheral issues. They are among the primary barriers to delivering better care. They limit time with patients, constrain clinical decision-making and reduce the system’s ability to identify and respond to risk early. In this context, delays are not simply inefficient. They can change outcomes.

System-Level Pressures

At the same time, there is a clear direction of travel. Services are moving from reactive to proactive care, from isolated systems to integrated data environments, and from administrative burden to time for care. Delivering that shift requires more than incremental improvement. It requires redesigning the processes that shape how care is delivered.

Digitisation of MHA workflows is one of the most immediate opportunities to do exactly that.

Structured digital workflows provide a practical example of how services can move from fragmented processes towards more integrated, data-driven models of care. By standardising how statutory information is captured, accessed and shared, organisations are able to create greater continuity across pathways that have traditionally relied on disconnected systems, manual communication and retrospective oversight.

A Structured, Real-Time Approach to MHA Workflows

eMHA by Thalamos has been developed to address these challenges by introducing a structured, end-to-end approach to managing MHA processes.

Every statutory step is captured, validated and shared within a single, purpose-built environment. Digital forms enforce completeness through mandatory fields, timestamps and role-based sign-off, creating a clear audit trail and reducing ambiguity.

More importantly, information is no longer dispersed. Digitising MHA workflows creates a structured source of truth that can be shared more effectively across organisational boundaries. Through eMHA by Thalamos, organisations are able to provide authorised access to key statutory information, even where partner agencies are not full users of the platform. This provides immediate context in situations where time and clarity are critical.

In practice, this reduces reliance on email, telephone calls and manual document transfer, while maintaining appropriate governance and auditability. The result is a more coordinated response, where professionals are better informed at the point decisions are made, without requiring full system alignment across every organisation involved.

Given the legal and clinical sensitivity of Mental Health Act processes, governance and information assurance are critical. eMHA by Thalamos incorporates role-based access controls, full audit trails, structured permissions and secure sharing capabilities designed to support information governance requirements while maintaining staff confidence in how sensitive information is accessed and managed.

Organisations deploying structured digital MHA workflows have reported:

• Elimination of common errors and legal issues associated with paper-based processes.
• Significant reductions in time spent locating documents, re-entering information, validating forms and manually coordinating statutory workflows across teams.
• Faster progression through key stages of the MHA pathway and more coordinated, multi-agency care.
• Improved confidence that decisions are being made with the full available context and support the least restrictive options.

This directly supports a central system ambition: reducing administrative burden and releasing more time for patient care, while building the data foundations required for future innovation, including AI-enabled insight.

From Retrospective Oversight to Proactive Safety

One of the most significant shifts enabled by digitisation is the move from retrospective review to real-time insight.

When MHA activity is captured in a structured format, organisations can identify patterns that would otherwise remain hidden. Repeated short-term detentions, an increasing frequency of crises or delays in key processes can be recognised as they emerge. This does not replace clinical judgement. It strengthens it.

By surfacing clearer, more timely statutory information at the point of assessment or review, eMHA supports professionals to make better-informed decisions within fast-moving and high-pressure environments.

At an organisational level, structured data provides greater visibility of variation, operational pressures and areas where additional intervention or oversight may be required. This supports a more proactive approach to governance, quality improvement and patient safety across the wider mental health system.

System-Level Pressures and Digitisation

In this sense, eMHA by Thalamos illustrates a wider principle underpinning digital transformation across mental health services. Meaningful transformation is not achieved by layering technology onto existing complexity. It comes from redesigning critical workflows and integrating with existing systems so that care becomes safer, more coordinated, more transparent and less administratively burdensome for both patients and professionals.

Thalamos are members of UK Healthcare and Life Sciences Innovation (UKHLSI): Find out more.

The implementation gap

Group Medical Director at Cygnet Health Care, Dr Jon Van Niekerk, opened the discussion with a speech outlining fundamental shortcomings in the current mental healthcare system. Patients, he argued, are not only “struggling to get into hospital when unwell” but are also “struggling to get out when better”.

An implementation gap persists, he said, “between legislation and actual experience”, resulting in delayed discharge from mental healthcare hospitals. He explained that a significant proportion of mental healthcare beds are occupied by patients who are medically fit for discharge but unable to leave due to failures elsewhere in the system.

The role of independent sector providers

Dr Van Niekerk argued that these problems stem from a broader pattern within UK healthcare of moving “too fast and too far”. Speaking from the perspective of the independent sector, he stressed that independent and voluntary providers are integral to the system.

“The issue isn’t NHS versus independent or voluntary providers,” he said. “It’s about how they are working together.” He argued that all parts of the system should be treated as partners within a single, integrated framework.

He also highlighted widespread fear in the system, insisting that fragmentation must be addressed. The solution, he argued, lies in connection: “connection will be the antidote to fear”.

Honest conversation and collaboration

Chief Executive Officer of Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust, Paul Scott echoed these points, calling for “honest conversation, better partnerships, and a clearer understanding of the consequences of failing to support neurodivergent people”.

MP for Cannock Chase, Josh Newbury reinforced the urgency of integration, stressing the scale of the mental health crisis and arguing that collaboration across integrated care systems is essential to improving access to appropriate, means tested mental healthcare support. Vice Chair for the Independent Mental Health Act Review, Steve Gilbert OBE reflected on the same themes, drawing on personal experience to underline the importance of joining up the multiple systems involved in acute mental healthcare.

Scott’s emphasis on “betterment” – a commitment to sustained improvement rather than short term fixes – ran throughout the discussion. As Thalamos Client Director, Zoe Seager noted, “there is so much that needs to be done across mental healthcare; what we do now must help current patients, not only focus on future prevention”.

The roundtable’s aims

The roundtable built on Curia’s report Integration, Investment, and Impact: The Call to Transform Mental Health and Social Care, exploring how the ambitions of the Mental Health Bill can be translated into real improvements in patient outcomes, service delivery and workforce sustainability.

Participants reflected on the need to move away from reactive crisis intervention towards long term, recovery led models of care, supported by modernised pathways, community-based services and responsible digital innovation across the mental healthcare sector.

The discussion aimed to generate clear, actionable recommendations for Curia’s forthcoming report while strengthening collaboration across sectors. Contributors highlighted the importance of empowering patients, supporting a resilient workforce and addressing regional variation to ensure reforms deliver lasting and equitable improvements nationwide.

Final reflections from Cat Eccles MP

Closing the discussion, Eccles described the drive to improve mental healthcare as “an opportunity, not a challenge”. She returned to Dr Van Niekerk’s central message, urging the system to focus on “building relationships – not working in silos”.

Drawing on her previous experience as a healthcare professional working in operating theatres, she spoke candidly about the “frustrating shortcomings” of current provision. Despite this, she emphasised that there is real reason for optimism. Her team, she explained, is exploring the use of digital tools to support people while they wait for care, which, alongside careful management of the risks associated with artificial intelligence, could transform mental health treatment, understanding and delivery.

To find out more about Curia’s Health, Care, and Life Sciences Research Group, contact Partnerships Director, Ben McDermott at ben.mcdermott@chamberuk.com

Dr Zoe Seager

Chief Client Officer

Partner content: This article was sponsored by Thalamos, a member of Curia’s Health, Care, and Life Sciences Research Group. As the Mental Health Bill receives Royal Assent this week, Chief Client Officer at Thalamos, Dr Zoe Seager calls for action to implement change.

The UK’s mental health system is approaching a moment of reckoning.

As the Mental Health Bill moves towards Royal Assent, the promise of a more humane, person-centred approach to crisis care feels closer than ever. Yet those working across health, social care, policing, and local government know that legislation alone cannot deliver meaningful change.

Over the past year, Thalamos has spoken with hundreds of professionals involved in mental health crisis response. Their insights reveal a system full of good intent but trapped by its own complexity – stretched, fragmented, and reliant on human resilience to make up for structural flaws.

If the Mental Health Bill is to mark genuine reform rather than another missed opportunity, three realities must be confronted: the challenges undermining safety, the gaps between policy and practice, and the connected future professionals are calling for.

The Challenges: Complexity Without Co-ordination

Crisis care is the ultimate test of public service co-ordination. In any given incident, acute care, mental health services, local authorities, police, and ambulance teams must all act quickly, lawfully, and compassionately. Yet accountability remains diffuse.

“We need one version of the truth. Everyone has their own spreadsheet, their own times, their own story.”

Police describe arriving at emergency departments to hand over patients detained under Section 136 of the Mental Health Act, only to wait for hours. Clinicians cite confusion over when the detention ‘clock’ starts and who is responsible for recording it. Administrators struggle to reconcile handwritten notes, emails, and phone calls into coherent records after the fact.

This is not about effort, it is about design. Crisis care depends on goodwill rather than structure, with success varying by local relationships rather than shared systems.

“The forms are less of a problem than the gaps between them.”

A workforce already at its limits compounds the risk. Section 12 approved doctors and approved mental health professionals who can carry out certain legal duties related to the assessment and detention of people with mental disorders in England and Wales are in short supply, especially overnight. This is creating a fragile safety net where lawful and timely assessments depend on who happens to be available.

After-hours gaps make this worse. As one professional put it, “After nine o’clock at night, the system shrinks.” Crisis teams stand down, transport options disappear, and people in acute distress wait in police cars or hospital corridors until morning – each delay eroding trust and increasing risk.

The Gaps: Ambition Running Ahead of Infrastructure

The Bill aims to modernise care and strengthen patient rights through measures like Advance Choice Documents and ending the detention of people with learning disabilities and autism, under Section 3. Yet many warn that reform without readiness could worsen existing pressures.

A central problem is data. Agencies hold fragments of information about the same event, but these fragments rarely connect. Health systems, police, and local authorities each tell a partial story – leaving no single version of the truth to show where delays or failures occur.

Funding is similarly fragmented. Budgets are split across health, policing, and social care, each facing annual uncertainty. Short-term grants and pilot projects abound, but sustainable joint commissioning is rare. Professionals often spend as much time navigating funding rules as improving services.

An ethical gap also persists between principle and practice. All involved value the least restrictive option, yet when community alternatives are unavailable, detention becomes the only path left. As one practitioner admitted, “Sometimes you know it’s not the right call, but it’s the only call left.”

Without addressing these structural weaknesses, even the most progressive legislation risks collapsing into compliance rather than compassion.

The Future: Connection as a Condition for Change

Despite the strain, there is quiet optimism. Many described how relatively small changes – better communication, shared visibility, consistent recording – can transform outcomes. When partners see the same information at the same time, disputes reduce, co-ordination improves, and focus returns to patient care.

Some regions are already moving in this direction. In London, mental health professionals now complete and share statutory forms digitally through eMHA by Thalamos, creating an auditable record of every detention, assessment, and discharge. In Dorset, live data helps leaders pinpoint where delays occur and why. Police forces, including the British Transport Police, are using MHForms by Thalamos to log Section 136 handovers into the care of health professionals for assessment and support in real time – turning anecdotal evidence into actionable insight.

“After nine at night, there’s no crisis team. We do what we can, but people end up waiting in the wrong place for too long.”

These examples are not about using technology for its own sake. They show what happens when information flows match the speed and sensitivity of crisis response, and how data itself can become a form of care – ensuring decisions are lawful, efficient, and humane.

Readiness for Reform

The Mental Health Bill offers both opportunity and a deadline. It cannot solve workforce shortages or rewrite funding models, but it demands stronger rights, greater transparency, and genuine accountability.

To meet those expectations, the infrastructure beneath must be fit for purpose. Professionals are not asking for new mandates, but for clarity, interoperability, and long-term investment in tools that make collaboration possible.

Regional partnerships are beginning to align police and NHS data to improve oversight of crisis pathways. In some areas, this intelligence is already shaping staffing at places of safety, reducing diversions to emergency departments, and saving money for integrated care boards.

This hints at a future where success is measured not by detentions completed, but by crises avoided – where accountability feels collective, not confrontational.

A System Ready to Act

Across every conversation, one message is clear: the system knows what must change. Professionals are not waiting for permission – they need structure and support to act. The cost of inaction is measured not only in budgets and bed days, but in trust between agencies, staff, patients, and communities.

The coming year will determine whether the Mental Health Bill delivers real reform or another layer of bureaucracy. Its success will depend on whether system leaders choose to invest in the connective tissue that holds crisis care together: shared information, shared accountability, and shared purpose.

The will exists – what is missing is alignment. With reform imminent, the window for action is closing fast.

Because in mental health crisis care, connection is not a luxury – it is the difference between a system that reacts, and one that heals.

About Thalamos

Thalamos partners with NHS mental health trusts, independent providers, local authorities, and police forces to digitise and streamline Mental Health Act processes. Its technology supports professionals to deliver swifter, simpler, and safer care during mental health crises.

Find out more: discover how Thalamos’ digital tools have driven operational and strategic benefits for mental health trusts, independent providers, and police forces.

www.thalamos.co.uk/impact