Various ICT solutions have been researched and developed to support psychiatric and eating disorders in different areas. Certain clinic in Finland treats eating disorders of children, adolescents and young adults. Treatment of an eating disorder begins with an assessment period. It’s main task is to collect information about the patient and his or her eating disorder during this period. Currently, the information collected during the assessment period is fragmented into different systems and much of the information remains tacit knowledge in the minds of nursing staff. The aim of this paper was to research assessment period is in practice, what challenges it poses and what kind of ICT solution could be used to meet them.

The research methods used in the thesis were based on the socio-technical systems design approach and participatory design. The study used qualitative research methods typical to socio-technical systems design: semi-structured group interviews, document exploration and a so-called future workshop with prospective users. The interview material was described as narrative and treated through themes emerging from the narrative.

The main results were a description of the assessment period and its challenges and a proposal for an ICT solution. Information in the current solution is heavily fragmented. For this reason, the information behind treatment decisions is difficult to see clearly, it is difficult to retrieve information on a patient-by-patient basis, and the overall picture is challenging to formulate based on the information systems. Sure, there is information in the National Patient Information System, but for some reason, records are intentionally kept very limited and therefore a lot of information is left out. In the current situation, also manual labour is unnecessarily needed. One challenge relates to the suitability of structured metrics in relation to individualized care. The current instrument based on paper forms is inflexible and does not sufficiently take into account individual differences between patients. The reasons described above burden the caregiver of the patient. The proposed solution concentrates the information from the current ten locations to three, reducing manual work, and facilitating data sharing, data retrieval, and overall picture processing from a single patient, as well as providing reporting capabilities across the entire patient population.