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Emergency physicians at Surrey Memorial Hospital are calling a handy new app being used by Delta police a “transformational change” that will improve care for individuals experiencing a mental-health crisis.

Delta police became the first police force in B.C. to use the HealthIM app that’s linked to the Surrey hospital’s emergency department. Police responding to calls involving a mental-health concern use a 25-question checkbox tool based on their observations of the individual. Once they input the information into the app on their mobile phones, they see a score that determines whether an individual needs to be apprehended under the Mental Health Act and taken to the ER. If the score doesn’t add up to that, then the police can link individuals to community mental-health services.

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About 15 per cent of all Delta police calls involve some sort of mental-health issue. And about one case per day in Delta requires a transfer to the ER. Police officers have to stay with the vulnerable individual until they are seen by a doctor, a process that can take up to two hours. In cases of apprehensions under the Act, police have to be convinced that individuals are suffering from a mental disorder and pose a risk to themselves or others.

Dr. Craig Murray, head of Surrey hospital emergency, said after the app went live Tuesday that police wasted no time using the technology to transmit encrypted information to the hospital regarding an individual they were bringing; the first patient was someone with a history of violent behaviour, so health professionals were able to properly prepare for that admission, reducing safety risks.

“The value of this technology is that it gives us advanced notice, just like when paramedics can warn us of a cardiac arrest coming or an acute stroke. It improves the timeliness and appropriateness of the care required,” Murray said.

Brendan Sheehan, director of operations for the Kitchener, Ont., software company that developed the app, said the questionnaire police officers can complete in five minutes asks about such things as the presence of hallucinations, irritability, intoxication and violence. It’s based on an established tool called the Brief Mental Health Screener. The firm markets the technology tool as “the new normal in crisis response.”