Polaris-Medical

Product Overview

Polaris Health Directions is a leading developer of outcomes management and clinical decision support systems for behavioral healthcare, and the integration of behavioral and medical treatments. The National Institutes on Health (NIH) has awarded to Polaris a grant for development of an automated behavioral assessment system (Polaris-Medical) for use in primary care settings.

Polaris-Medical is designed to detect and monitor behavioral health problems in primary care patients. It can be integrated into office procedures with little or no increase in staff workload. It is fully automated and provides reliable assessment data based upon patient self-report.

Completion of the questionnaire takes a few minutes for patients that screen negative for a behavioral disorder, and less than ten minutes for patients screening positive. Immediately after patient completion of the questionnaire a “lab report” is printed. The report:

1) Shows the severity of the patient’s symptoms of Anxiety and Depression in relation to norms for primary care and mental health patients;

2) For patients with an elevated depression score, the physician is alerted to conditions reported by the patient that may account for the depression (“Rule out”): bereavement, bipolar disorder or chemical dependency.

3) Provides a screen for chemical dependency and suicidal ideation (a screen for global psychological problem severity will be added in V2.0);

4) Indicates whether the patient has a prescription for a CNS medication and, if so, whether it is being taken as prescribed and is perceived to be helpful;

5) Displays trends in symptom severity over time (monitoring report).

The report is designed for easy integration with treatment guidelines. It helps the physician decide: Does the patient have unusually severe symptoms of psychological disturbance? If so, is it best to monitor the patient’s condition (“watch and wait”), to refer to a behavioral health specialist, or to prescribe medication? Patients can be monitored to determine whether his/her condition is improving.