Digital innovation for mental health crisis pathway

S12 Solutions was founded in 2017 to address delays in service users being assessed under the Mental Health Act.

The company provides a platform that makes it more efficient for mental health professionals to complete Mental Health Act assessments by bringing together the most appropriate team for the task.

Amy Manning, Founder of S12 Solutions

Amy Manning, founder of S12 Solutions (pictured), is a former approved mental health professional.

She set out to try and find a better way to organise Mental Health Act assessment teams and minimise avoidable delay.

To begin with Amy spent time researching what else had been done across England to attempt to address this issue. Her goal was to improve the way the system worked for the person being assessed. 

Amy was able to set up two pilot sites initially but was unaware of many of the funding and support options available to help scale the project.

Early on in S12 Solutions’ journey, Amy turned to the Health Innovation South West for its experience of evaluating impact and applying learning to help her develop the initial evaluation of these two pilot sites.

Health Innovation South West helped strengthen the evaluation process and improve the questions being asked to ensure the results were robust and suitable to be shared more widely.

Health Innovation South West also encouraged a successful application to NHS England’s Evidence Generation Fund for more sites, bringing the total to 18.

It also supported S12 Solutions to further evidence the spread and adoption of the platform.

S12 Solutions has continued to grow and, in April 2021, it was acquired by VitalHub, a healthcare software company. 

The platform is now being used in 44 sites across England, including the original 18 funded sites, which all went on to recommission the service from their local budgets.