A local navigation tool for mental health care (MChart)

Start Date

28 November 2022

End Date

17 December 2025

Project Participants

ACT Health, Bupa Foundation, Capital Health Network, Psicost Scientific Association, Swinburne University of Technology, University of Canberra

Status: Completed

Tags: clinical decision support, community health, dashboards, data analytics, data visualisation, geospatial analytics, health planning, health system, healthcare data, healthcare utilisation, mental health, population health, workforce

Opportunity 

Mental and substance use disorders are among the leading contributors to disease burden in Australia, accounting for approximately 15% of the total burden of disease (AIHW, 2026). Australia’s complex and disjointed mental healthcare system remains a barrier to improving health outcomes, as services are fragmented and often challenging to navigate. Service planners and navigators often lack integrated information on available mental health services – including their location, workforce capacity, utilisation patterns, and alignment with community needs.  

This project sought to address this gap by co-designing and creating a comprehensive digital mental health service platform (MChart) to facilitate local navigation of mental health care for health professionals and decision makers. 

Project Objectives  

The research team aimed to develop, test, and implement the “Mental healthcare operational navigation Chart” (MChart), a multi-modal and multi-level framework with related tools to help navigate the local mental health system for health professionals, managers and planners. This was demonstrated for the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) health system, bringing together service directories, workforce information, geospatial mapping, utilisation datasets and community indicators to support evidence-based mental health planning.

The project successfully delivered MChart, an interactive platform that helps mental health care planners to visually navigate the local mental health service data, from information about available mental health programs and their use to their context and connections. Currently the Services Open Access layer is freely available, providing a simple visualisation of local services in the ACT. More advanced features intended for mental health planner and health practitioner use are available on registration. 

The research team also produced underlying resources that enable MChart, including Description and Evaluation of Services and Directories (DESDE) which maps the semantic interoperability of the coding system with the National Mental Health Service Planning Framework (NMHSPF), the ACT Mental Health Atlas 2024-25, a public mental health service directory, and training resources for using the platform.  

The MChart platform offers health planners a framework to better understand the health service landscape from available system data and help improve strategic decision-making. It offers capabilities for visualising service and workforce distribution, analysing service utilisation, and identifying gaps. The project produced a scalable platform capable of supporting mental health planning locally while laying foundations for application across disability, aged care and other human services sectors both nationally and internationally. 

Integrity, Excellence,
Teamwork and Authenticity

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