Mental Health software

NHS mental health services are managing more demand than at any point in recent history. An estimated 1.7 million people are on mental health waiting lists in England, and secondary mental health services received an average of 453,930 new referrals every month in 2024/25, up 15% from 2022/23. At the same time, 385,540 children and young people were still waiting for a first contact from community mental health services in the three months to March 2025, up 14.4% year on year.

The NHS 10 Year Health Plan (July 2025) sets out a significant shift in how mental health care is delivered. Services are moving towards 24/7 neighbourhood care models, with 100% national coverage of assertive outreach care over the next decade. The first neighbourhood mental health centres are already opening, bringing together crisis services, community mental health teams and short-stay beds under one roof. The National Quality Board is also developing a Modern Service Framework for mental health, one of its early priorities, to drive improvements in quality and productivity across the sector.

For NHS mental health providers, that means managing more complex pathways, greater demand for data sharing across settings, and higher expectations around reporting and outcomes. The right software makes that manageable.

The NHS Long Term Plan targets that remain in force for 2025/26 include:

• 345,000 more children and young people to be treated via NHS-funded mental health services and school or college-based mental health support teams
• Funding for CAMHS to grow faster than both overall NHS funding and total mental health spending
• NHS Talking Therapies: 75% of patients to have a first appointment within 6 weeks of referral; 95% within 18 weeks
• An additional 380,000 people to access Talking Therapies services, expanding IAPT capacity nationwide

The Mental Health Act sets out the legal framework for how people with mental health disorders are assessed, treated and protected. For NHS mental health teams, managing compliance with the Act is a significant operational responsibility, covering everything from the sectioning process through to renewals, tribunals and patient rights.

Access Rio EPR has a dedicated Mental Health Act module that gives inpatient and outpatient teams full end-to-end management of the sectioning process. MHA managers get a clear view of upcoming renewals, tribunal dates and required actions through a built-in task management tool, reducing the risk of missed deadlines and keeping communication between clinical parties accurate and transparent.

We also work in partnership with Thalamos, who digitise the form-filling elements of the Mental Health Act process. Patient records are more secure, key information is faster to access and share, and the risk of errors is reduced. The Thalamos integration opens directly from within Rio, connected to the patient's record, so teams can complete the traditional pink sheet process digitally without switching between systems.

The Rio mental health module is approved on the Gov.uk Digital Marketplace and confirmed compliant with the Mental Health Act.

Our efforts to future-proof our software solutions has led to the development of Access Evo; an AI-supported, cloud-native platform that connects everything.

This means we can configure workflows, build new modules rapidly, and connect data across different healthcare settings. This tailored approach benefits each individual customer but also allows us to customise each solution’s integration with Evo.

Rio Evo shows how our Rio EPR is moving to a next-generation SaaS platform, with continuous updates and modern workflow support. Evo boasts a clean UI, single sign-on authentication to speed up logins and app swapping, and provides update Feeds, personalised work Spaces, Copilot for engaging with your data and files, and Analytics to process said data and provide insights and forecasts.