Janssen has launched a social network-based service for doctors involved in commissioning mental health services.
The partnership with the NHS Confederation Mental Health Network will link up GPs using social networking programme Yammer to help them commission mental health services more effectively.
Reforms outlined in the Health and Social Care Bill will see clinical commissioning groups take over responsibility for commissioning the majority of NHS services in England.
Mental health services will not only be one of the largest areas of spending for GP commissioners, but it will also be one of the most specialised and the NHS Confederation said large numbers of GPs had already expressed an interested in the new service.
It aims to give GP commissioners access to the most up to date policy information, help them share best practice, provide the latest evidence-based approaches and offer opportunities to learn from current commissioners of mental health services.
Those joining up will also be offered the chance to meet face to face at regional meetings and explore service change.
Isabel Laas, business unit director at Janssen, said: “The transition of mental health commissioning to primary care will raise questions and challenges for the effective delivery of care to patients. This partnership is a fantastic opportunity to help GPs optimise the way in which people affected by mental illness are managed by the NHS.”
Janssen’s interests in mental health centre around its long-acting injectable antipsychotic Risperdal Consta (risperdone), which made global sales of $1.5bn in 2010.
More recently the company won European approval for its daily, oral schizoaffective disorder treatment Invega (paliperidone) in January and its injectable antipsychotic Xeplion (paliperidone palmitate) was licensed to treat schizophrenia in March.
Accompanying the launch of the social network service is a fact sheet setting out the size of the challenge new GP commissioners face as they take responsibility for mental health services.
Steve Shrubb, NHS Confederation Mental Health Network Director, said: “About one in six people has some form of mental illness and GPs already recognise that mental illness is one of the most common illnesses people come to them with.
“This fact sheet will launch a whole programme of work that the Mental Health Network will be undertaking with Janssen to help GP commissioners assume their new responsibilities in mental health.”
The new service, which will be free to join for the next 12 months, is a joint venture between the NHS Confederation Mental Health Network and Janssen and the two partners will pay for an equal share of its £77,000 budget.
