Psychiatry Innovation Lab Comes to IPS

APA’s 2016 Annual Meeting in May featured the debut of the Psychiatry Innovation Lab, a new educational component designed to foster creative solutions for improving the delivery of quality mental health care, while also providing a venue for innovators to connect with peers, collaborators, and investors. Because of the wide enthusiasm with which it was met at that meeting, it is now being introduced at APA’s fall meeting, IPS: The Mental Health Services Conference, being held this year in Washington, D.C. “Psychiatry Innovation Lab: Pitch an Idea. Build a Team. Design a Venture. Measure your Impact” will take place on Saturday, October 8, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Nina Taylor

There are multiple ways to get involved:

• Have an innovative idea? Individuals or groups can submit their pitches using the application form. Submissions are due by September 21. The seven most promising pitches will be selected as finalists for the competition, and 10 others will be designated as “wildcards” with an opportunity to be selected as a finalist by the session audience.

• Have unique expertise that can help an innovator? Nonmembers with business, administrative, or other skills are invited to apply as “innovation leaders” who will be teamed with a finalist to help evaluate and improve the finalist’s idea.

• Have some time while at the IPS? All APA members are invited to attend the Innovation Lab, where they can join a finalist of their choice and the finalist’s innovation leaders.

All those interested in participating in the lab should submit their application by the September 21 deadline.

The format will be similar to the event held at the Annual Meeting, in which the seven finalists will first pitch their ideas to expert judges, followed by an interactive breakout session in which the participants and attendees partner into teams to brainstorm the questions posed by the judges during the pitch session and work together to improve their innovations.

“There has been a call to action by the federal government to accelerate innovation in mental health,” said Nina Vasan, M.D., a psychiatry resident at Stanford University and founder and chair of the Innovation Lab series. “The Psychiatry Innovation Lab is APA’s response to the challenge, and it provides a platform to turn good ideas into impactful ventures.”

“We want a range of ideas from diverse perspectives,” Vasan told Psychiatric News. “People naturally associate innovation with technology, but I want to encourage people to think more broadly and inclusively about innovation. It can mean novel partnerships, new models of care delivery, or a better distribution of evidence-based medicine.”

The proposals need not be limited to clinical care, as there are numerous problems related to parity, education, research, and prevention that need to be addressed.

“Prevention is especially pertinent for this meeting, as [APA President] Dr. Maria Oquendo made ‘Prevention in Practice’ the central theme of IPS,” Vasan said. “I think it is a brilliant theme, and I hope many applicants will celebrate that theme as part of their proposals.”

Since this year’s meeting happens to be in the nation’s capital and during the presidential campaigning season, Vasan believes ideas that address the role of the government in mental health care delivery—for example, launching effective public health campaigns or improving mental health for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries—would fit in thematically as well. ■