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ImpleMentAll project: To succeed, implementers must navigate a complex set of implementation processes, and many projects fail.

ImpleMentAll is a European collaboration determined to support faster and more effective implementation of eHealth interventions.

The ItFits-Toolkit is the result – this online toolkit draws on proven strategies developed by experts and tested by implementers across eight countries.

Join the IMA 2-day Final Conference online and receive exclusive insights into the ItFits-Toolkit, learn of the scientific outcomes and network with participants from all over the world, including experts from clinical and implementation science, clinical practice, innovation and more.

Registrations have closed

The Final Conference has been held. 

Video recordings and speaker presentations from the Final Conference will be available soon on the Outcomes and Resources page.

Program

10.00 – OPENING – DAY ONE
ImpleMentAll Final Conference
Moderators:
 Kim Mathiasen PhD, Project Coordinator – ImpleMentAll
Christiaan Vis, Scientific Coordinator – ImpleMentAll

10.15 – KEYNOTE
Strategic Intentions and Everyday Practices: what do normalisation processes look like?
Professor Dr. Carl May PhD FAcSS FRCGP (Hon)
Professor of Medical Sociology

10.45 – KEYNOTE
Opportunities to improve mental health services through adaptive and tailored approaches to implementation
Assistant Professor Byron J. Powell, PhD, LCSW
Brown School and School of Medicine; Co-Director, Center for Mental Health Services Research; Washington University in St. Louis

> COFFEE BREAK

11.30 – PRESENTATION
Headline results of ImpleMentAll Project:

Effectiveness Study
Christiaan Vis, IMA Scientific Coordinator

ItFits-Toolkit Process Evaluation
Professor Tracy Finch, Professor of Healthcare and Implementation Science

Implementation-as-usual
Anne Etzelmüller, Dipl.-Psych., PP Implementation Research Manager at HelloBetter by GET.ON, Work Package Lead “Implementation Management and Knowledge Transfer”

12.25 – FLASHTALKS
Digital Prevention of Depression for Farmers?
A Qualitative Study about Barriers and Facilitators in the Nationwide Implementation of Tailored Internet Interventions from a Health Workers’ Perspective
Johanna Freund M.Sc. (Clinical Researcher)

Do target-group specific interventions pay off? – Adaptation and implementation of digital mental health interventions to German farmers
Dr. Elena Heber, VP Content & Research (HelloBetter)

> LUNCH BREAK – CHANGE TO WORKSHOPS (VIA ZOOM MEETING LINK, MEETING ID: 838 9606 3803) 

14.00 – WORKSHOPS
Showcase of the ItFits-Toolkit and live question and answer session with implementers
Workshop Moderators:
Professor Tracy Finch, Professor of Healthcare and Implementation Science
Johanna Freund M.Sc. (Clinical Researcher)
Dr. D. (Denise) J.C. Hanssen, Psychologist, researcher, implementation lead for Master Your Symptoms
Caroline Oehler (M.Sc.Psych), Implementation Lead, German Depression Foundation
Sebastian Potthoff, C. Psychol, PhD, Lecturer in Public Health
Professor Tim Rapley, Northumbria University
Kristine Tarp, Anthropologist, PhD, Postdoc
Ingrid Titzler, M.Sc. (Project and Implementation Lead, trial site GET.ON

14.55 – FLASHTALK
All(most) implemented for patients?
Erik Van der Eycken – Expert by Experience / EU Research Projects Officer, GAMIAN
 

15.15 – CLOSING NOTE
Moderators: Kim Mathiasen PhD, Project Coordinator – ImpleMentAll
Christiaan Vis, Scientific Coordinator – ImpleMentAll

10.00 – OPENING – DAY TWO

ImpleMentAll Final Conference
Moderators: Kim Mathiasen PhD, Project Coordinator – ImpleMentAll
Christiaan Vis, Scientific Coordinator – ImpleMentAll

10.15 – KEYNOTE

Innovation to Implementation: e-Mental Health in Canada
Nicholas Watters, MBA. Director, Access to Quality Mental Health Services, Mental Health Commission of Canada

10.40 – PANEL DISCUSSION

ImpleMentAll and Implementation in the context of COVID-19
Moderator:
Christiaan Vis, Scientific Coordinator – ImpleMentAll
Panelists:
Dr. Arlinda Cerga Pashoja, Assistant Professor of Global Mental Health with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Professor Dr. Ulrich Hegerl, President of the European Alliance Against Depression and the German Depression Foundation

11.05 – PANEL DISCUSSION

Theories and Evidence – Context and Tailoring of Implementation Strategies

Moderator: Kim Mathiasen PhD, Project Coordinator – ImpleMentAll
Panelists: Bianca Albers, PhD, MSc – Associate Director
Professor Carl May PhD FAcSS FRCGP (Hon), Professor of Medical Sociology
Assistant Professor Byron J. Powell, PhD, LCSW
Brown School and School of Medicine; Co-Director, Center for Mental Health Services Research; Washington University in St. Louis

> COFFEE BREAK

12.00 – PANEL DISCUSSION (Audience Q&A)
ImpleMentAll Results – Effectiveness and Evaluation
Moderator:
Kim Mathiasen PhD, Project Coordinator – ImpleMentAll
Panelists:
Professor Tracy Finch, Professor of Healthcare and Implementation Science
Josien Schuurmans, PhD, Senior Investigator/Trial Coordinator – ImpleMentAll
Christiaan Vis, Scientific Coordinator – ImpleMentAll

12.40 – PANEL DISCUSSION (Audience Q&A)
Future Plans for the ItFits-Toolkit
Moderator
: Christiaan Vis, Scientific Coordinator – ImpleMentAll
Panelists: Sebastian Potthoff, C. Psychol, PhD, Lecturer in Public Health
Josien Schuurmans, PhD, Senior Investigator/Trial Coordinator – ImpleMentAll

> LUNCH BREAK – CHANGE TO WORKSHOPS (VIA ZOOM MEETING LINK) 

14.00 – WORKSHOP
Application of the It-Fits Toolkit in Implementation Projects – Past and Future
(Speakers to follow)

14.45 – PANEL DISCUSSION
Reflections of the ImpleMentAll Scientific Advisory Board
Moderator: Professor Dr. Heleen Riper, Chair ImpleMentAll Scientific Advisory Board
Panelists: Professor Dr. Ulrich Hegerl
Assoc. Professor Dr. David Daniel Ebert

15.10 – CLOSING NOTES
Moderators
: Kim Mathiasen PhD, Project Coordinator, ImpleMentAll
Christiaan Vis, Scientific Coordinator, ImpleMentAll

Our Speakers

Byron J. Powell, PhD, LCSW; Assistant Professor, Brown School and School of Medicine; Co-Director, Center for Mental Health Services Research; Washington University in St. Louis

Byron Powell is an Assistant Professor at the Brown School and School of Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis where he also serves as Co-Director of the Center for Mental Health Services Research. His scholarship has focused on barriers and facilitators to implementing evidence-based practices; designing, tailoring, and assessing the effectiveness of implementation strategies; and advancing implementation research methods. His research has primarily been supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Byron has served as faculty for several training initiatives, including the Implementation Research Institute, Training Institute for Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health (TIDIRH), TIDIRH-Ireland, TIDIRH-Australia, and Knowledge Translation Canada Summer Institute. He is President of the Society for Implementation Research Collaboration, and he is on the editorial boards of Implementation Science and Implementation Research and Practice.

Professor Carl May is a medical sociologist and implementation scientist. His work has focused on building a richer understanding of the factors that promote and inhibit the effective adoption, implementation, and integration of new technologies and ways of working in health and social care. Much of this work has explored the management of long-term conditions in primary care. Carl initiated and led the work that developed explanatory models of these factors and forms the foundation for intervention design and evaluation across a wide variety of services ranging from health and social care. These explanatory models – Normalization Process Theory and Burden of Treatment Theory – have been validated in research and practice and are widely employed internationally. Carl is Professor of Medical Sociology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and is an Honorary Professorial Fellow in the Department of General Practice and Primary Care at the University of Melbourne. In 2020 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners in the UK.

Dr. Bianca Albers is Associate Director at the London branch of the Centre for Evidence and Implementation. She is an internationally recognised implementation expert, and a co-founder and past chair of the European Implementation Collaborative. In her work, Bianca focuses on the implementation, improvement and evaluation of research-supported programs, practices and service models in child and family services; and on building the capacity within organisations and services to adopt, use and sustain evidenced practices and policies. Throughout the ImpleMentAll project, Bianca has been a member of our Advisory Committee.

Dr. Ken Carswell is a Technical Officer with the WHO Department of Mental Health and Substance Use. He is the innovation and digital focal point for the department and has been centrally involved in the development of a number of WHO scalable psychological interventions, including self-help interventions that use technology or online delivery, such as Step-by-Step and Self-Help Plus (SH+). He has been involved with Step-by-Step since its start and is now leading work readying the intervention for publication by WHO.
 

Anne_EtzelmüllerAnne Etzelmueller, Dipl.-Psych., PP Implementation Research Manager at HelloBetter by GET.ON WP Lead “Implementation Management and Knowledge Transfer”

Anne Etzelmueller is a clinical psychologist and researcher. She currently works at HelloBetter by GET.ON and the Department of Clinical Psychology Psychotherapy, Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. Anne does research in clinical psychology, digital mental health, and implementation. During the last years she has been involved in several randomized controlled trials and open studies, with a focus on the evaluation of internet interventions under routine conditions as well as their implementation. Currently, she is involved in projects concerning the evaluation of internet-based interventions under routine conditions, the improvement of the implementation of eHealth in Europe. She is also involved in a H2020 project designing, implementing, and evaluating effective multi-level (eMental health) interventions to promote mental health in public organisations and SMEs, focussing on individual and organisational outcomes of the adopted measures, and provide recommendations for employers, occupational health professionals and policymakers.

As EU Research Project Officer at GAMIAN Europe and expert by experience in mental health, Erik Van der Eycken is active in various EU funded research projects. As a person with lived experience, he has a liaison function between national patients organisations as members of GAMIAN Europe. He is involved in the operation of the ‘MEP-Alliance for Mental Health’ in the European parliament. Erik is board member of the Belgian patients association “Ups & Downs” (bipolar disorder & chronic depression) and participates in governmental steering committees on mental health care in Flanders.

Professor Tracy Finch, Professor of Healthcare and Implementation Science

Tracy is Professor of Healthcare & Implementation Science in the Department of Nursing, Midwifery & Health, at Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne (United Kingdom). Tracy’s research focuses on the social, psychological and organizational aspects of implementing new interventions in health and wellbeing. Tracy is known for her work in implementation science, most notably Normalization Process Theory (NPT), of which she is co-developer, and for developing tools and assessment instruments to support non-academic users conducting implementation work in practice settings. Her research applies mixed methods in relation to a broad range of health issues, including mental health, intervention and services for older people, patient safety systems, health care experiences, and e-health interventions. Tracy is leading work on Implementation Science and Knowledge Mobilization as part of the North East & North Cumbria NIHR Applied Research Collaborative (ARC)

Johanna Freund is a psychologist and clinical researcher with a strong interest in the implementation and evaluation of internet- and tele-based solutions for the prevention of depression. She gained experience in various health care fields as a research assistant at the chair of epidemiology and preventive medicine and as a freelancer at an institute for occupational health management. After studying psychology at the University of Regensburg (Germany) and the Charles University Prague (Czech Republic), Johanna has been working as a research assistant at the Department of Clinical psychology and Psychotherapy at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany) in the e-mental health working group since April 2018.

As a founding member of HelloBetter, Elena‘s aim is to implement evidence-based digital mental health interventions in routine health care. In her role as VP Content & Research, she is responsible for intervention development and evaluation. Elena has completed her PhD in digital mental health and worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany and the University of Southampton, UK.

Prof. dr. Ulrich Hegerl is a highly sought-after expert in suicide prevention. He has developed a community based intervention for a better care of depression and prevention of suicidal behavior which has been implemented in Europe, Chile, and Australia. His main areas of research include: Treatment of depression, public mental health and community based mental health interventions, suicide prevention, neurobiology of psychiatric disorders, functional brain imaging and sleep-wake regulation with over 500 publications in peer-reviewed journals. He is president of the European Alliance Against Depression, the German Depression Foundation and was recently assigned the Distinguished Professorship funded by Dr. Senckenbergische Stiftung at the Department of Psychiatry, Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Frankfurt, Goethe University Frankfurt. Furthermore he is Scientific Advisory Council of the German Medical Association since 2013.

Robin Kenter is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Clinical Psychology at the University of Bergen, Norway. Her research is aimed at the development, (clinical) evaluation and implementation of digital psychological interventions for mental disorders. She is a WP leader at the Centre of Mobile Mental Health (CMMH) which aims to increase the use and impact of digital psychological interventions in Norway.

Kim Mathiasen, PhD is the Coordinator of ImpleMentAll, representing RSD. He has a PhD in psychology and is a licensed clinical psychologist. He is presently employed as a research psychologist at the Centre for Telepsychiatry in the Mental Health Services of Southern Denmark and at the University of Southern Denmark. Since 2006, he has pioneered internet based cognitive behavioural therapy (iCBT) in Denmark. From 2012 he led the establishment of the first Danish large scale iCBT clinic Internetpsykiatrien at the Centre for Telepsychiatry, which now has national coverage free of charge for all Danish adults suffering from depression or anxiety disorders. He has contributed to several largescale EU projects and is part of the board for the European Society of Internet Interventions.

Caroline Oehler has spent the last five years researching Internet-based interventions. After completing her degree in psychology and training as a systemic coach, she began to wonder if there might be a viable way to incorporate new technologies into the care of patients with mental illness. In recent years, she has been investigating the strengths and weaknesses of web-based interventions for depression and has been working on the implementation of one such intervention, the iFightDepression tool in Germany.

Dr. Arlinda Cerga Pashoja is an Assistant Professor of Global Mental Health with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Her research interests lie in the development, evaluation and implementation of culturally appropriate, digital, mental health interventions in low-resourced settings, with a focus on countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

Sebastian Potthoff is a lecturer and chartered health psychologist at Northumbria University in the UK. In his research he focuses on the intersection between health psychology and implementation science. He is interested in how theories from the behavioural sciences can be applied to promote the uptake of high-quality evidence-based care, through healthcare professional behaviour change. Within intervention design he is interested in the role of co-design and developing interventions to support healthcare professionals with creating and breaking habits and routines.

Jinane Abi Ramia is a public health professional with a masters degree in health management and policy, and a PhD candidate at VU Amsterdam. She’s been the local project coordinator of the e-mental health intervention research project Step-by-Step, with the National Mental Health Programme and the World Health Organization for the past 5 years. She’s currently managing the scale up of Step-by-Step into a public service in Lebanon.

Tim Rapley is a medical sociologist with an interest in social studies of medical work, research and practice. He is Professor of Applied Heath Care Research at Northumbria University.

Heleen Riper is professor of eMental-Health at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Department Clinical, Developmental and Neuro Psychology, section Clinical Psychology, The Netherlands) and works as well at GGZ inGeest a large mental health service organization in the Amsterdam region (Research Department), Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She is honorary professor Telepsychiatry at the University of Southern Denmark (Faculty of Health Sciences, Odense) and a visiting professor at the University of Turku, Faculty of Medicine, Finland.

Over the past 20 years her research focus has been on the development, evaluation and implementation of innovative eMental-Health interventions for common mental disorders from prevention to treatment. The scope of her current research activities includes the use of mobile health, and combined online and face to face (‘blended’) treatments for depression, anxiety and substance use related disorders. New methodological challenges include the development and evaluation of mobile ecological momentary assessments and interventions (EMA/EMI), patient-centered design and digital phenotyping. She has opted for an international perspective and collaboration throughout her academic career and acted as Principal Investigator of over 15 large scale European Union projects and reviewer for Research Funding Organizations globally. She was Principal Investigator/coordinator of the European Comparative Effectiveness study on Internet Interventions for Depression (E-COMPARED, www.e-compared.eu). She has published over 300 (international) peer reviewed papers and book chapters within the eMental-health domain (H index 48 as per 2021). In 2020 she has been ranked by the Web of Science™ in the top of 1% mostly cited researchers in her cross-sectional domain.  In 2013 Heleen Riper (co) founded the Journal of Internet Interventions of which she is associated editor (published by Elsevier) and from 2014 – 2016 she was President of the International Society for Research on Internet Interventions (ISRII). Since 2018 she is director of the DIFFER EU-Consortium (Digitial Framework For E-health Research) which  provides a technological not-for-profit platform  (Moodbuster 2.0) for mental-health researchers who aim to develop, evaluate and implement the digital interventions (www.moodbuster.science).

Josien Schuurmans

Dr. J. Schuurmans, PhD is a senior researcher and practising psychologist at the department of research and innovation within GGZ InGeest. Her PhD focused on the treatment and epidemiological study of late-life anxiety disorders. Over the years, she served both as chair as well as an active member of several (national) task- and workforces for the establishment of new (multidisciplinary) treatment guidelines in the field of mental health. In recent years her research focus has shifted to the feasibility, implementation and effectiveness of blended care for (moderate to severe) mental health disorders in a secondary care setting. She was one of the co-founders of the Mindway clinic (www.mindway.nl). As central IMA trial manager, she has assumed a coordinating and consulting role to support both the overall project and the sites in the standardized collection, storage, and management of the data, as well as the translation of the generic protocol to local site-specific protocols. implementing evidence-based practices; designing, tailoring, and assessing the effectiveness of implementation strategies; and advancing implementation research methods. His research has primarily been supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Byron has served as faculty for several training initiatives, including the Implementation Research Institute, Training Institute for Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health (TIDIRH), TIDIRH-Ireland, TIDIRH-Australia, and Knowledge Translation Canada Summer Institute. He is President of the Society for Implementation Research Collaboration, and he is on the editorial boards of Implementation Science and Implementation Research and Practice.

Ingrid Titzler is implementation lead at the GET.ON Institute and scientific project lead at the Chair of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy of the University Erlangen-Nuremberg. Her experience as psychologist, therapist, and communication expert guides and enriches her research with a focus on evaluation and implementation of e-mental health solutions for the prevention and treatment of mental health disorders. Within the ImpleMentAll project, she leads the implementation core team at GET.ON and the health care insurance company by using a toolkit to improve implementation strategies. She is also leading the trial coordination and data collecting process. She is also acting as a therapist in an outpatient clinic setting. Ingrid Titzler is currently finishing her doctoral degree in psychology about the ‘effectiveness of blended internet-/mobile-based therapy for depression and the perceived barriers and facilitators regarding their implementation on the perspective of therapists and general practitioners.

 

Christiaan Vis works as a research associate (with Ph.D. candidature) at the department of Clinical, Neuro-, & Developmental Psychology at the VU Amsterdam. His research is focused at understanding the mediating factors and processes by which evidence-based interventions are implemented in routine practice. In essence, his focus is on change processes in people and organisations. Christiaan initiated and designed the ImpleMentAll project (H2020, 2017-2021) and coordinates the scientific research in the project. Prior to ImpleMentAll, Christiaan managed the E-COMPARED project (FP7, 2014-2018) and acted as the scientific coordinator of the MasterMind project (CIP-ICT-PSP, 2014-2017) that conducted a summative evaluation of implementing eMental health in routine practice in 15 European regions. Christiaan currently also works as Principal Consultant at Technopolis Group where he works on the formation, evaluation and implementation of policies at the intersection of Science, Technology, and Life Sciences & Health.

Nicholas Watters is the Director of Access to Quality Mental Health Services at the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC). In this role, Nicholas is responsible for e-Mental Health, increasing access to psychotherapies, structural stigma, and the development of tools and resources for healthcare providers. Prior to this role, Nicholas was the Director of the MHCC’s Knowledge Exchange Centre, where he developed the SPARK knowledge exchange training program that has been running for eight years in Canada and has been implemented in Australia, New Zealand and Sweden.

Publications

You may find this collection of documents and videos from the IMA project of interest. We will continue to update this section regularly, including publishing any documents pertaining to the conference.