Personalised and precision mental health in eating disorders: why routine outcome measurement is key.

Abstract

For over a decade, the mental health field has been interested in precision treatment using psychopharmacological interventions. More recently, this interest has expanded to include psychotherapy, which is the primary treatment modality for eating disorders. Personalised medicine and precision treatment are also seen as priorities for the eating disorder field by those with lived experience and carers, clinicians and researchers. However, precision treatment necessitates the collection of large amounts of clinical data. Three frameworks exist or have been proposed for the purpose of gathering large-scale routine clinical outcomes in eating disorder services: The International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement (ICHOM) eating disorder set, the Australia national minimum dataset, and the Eating Disorders Clinical Research Network. Despite the emergence of these frameworks, challenges exist with implementation. This paper outlines the rationale for the collection of routine outcome data in eating disorder treatment settings, the three existing frameworks proposed, and considerations for implementation and scaling. These include clinical and practice applications, technical aspects, statistics, and contextual factors. We invite attention to our recommendations and collaborative approaches to facilitate progress towards precision treatment in eating disorders.