Patients’ access to their health records has long been considered an important milestone in the journey towards increasingly patient-centred, collaborative care. European countries including Sweden and Estonia have implemented national patient record systems providing individuals and designated carers access to diverse medical records. The sensitive nature of mental health records however continues to inspire debate, as regards balancing patient autonomy and understanding against concern for patients’ knowledge, anxiety or potential emotional harm.

In Ireland, accessing mental health records remains a laborious and time-consuming task, compounding an often already emotionally fraught experience of care. There exists a recognised need to understand and scaffold access to mental health records - as a holistic experience rather than a single point of interaction - in order to support patient-centred mental health care. Digital tools offer one potential pathway towards addressing this challenge.

Digital mental health technologies, from mobile apps to AI chatbots, are increasingly playing a role in how many among us navigate and support our mental health. Most such tools however foster little integration with existing mental health records — an action which must be approached carefully, with intentionality and purpose, and in recognition of the extent to which how such tools are designed will shape patients’ experiences of accessing their mental health records. Emotionally aware and culturally sensitive design practices are essential to ensure accessible interfaces, clarity of medical terminology, and alignment with lived patient experiences. Platforms which fail to reflect these dimensions otherwise risk emotionally discomforting, marginalising, or excluding patients and clients.

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This challenge of understanding and designing to scaffold the patient experience of accessing mental health records was the focus of the HCI Design Project embraced during Summer 2025 by Nikhil Afonso, Shivangi Bodh, Kosisochukwu Ibute, Yujing Liang and Swetha Vukkadala in coordination with their project champion; designer and patient advocate Lia Foley-Kelleher.

This interdisciplinary team led a programme of mixed-methods research, including an anonymous survey of 19 patients in Ireland and interviews with experts across three domains: a researcher in health information and ethics, a specialist in social psychiatry involved in national pilot studies on patient access to electronic health records, and a product designer focused on mental health services. These insights acknowledged a spectrum of perspectives spanning empirical research, clinical practice, and user-centred design. Building on their findings, the team explored a range of technologies through rigorous ideation, including voice assistants, wearable devices, augmented reality, web and mobile platforms. Each concept addressed important aspects of the holistic patient journey including privacy, emotional support, cognitive load, and timely access to records. Through co-design workshops involving feature prioritization, the team translated insights into a mobile app solution to fit seamlessly into real-world mental health workflows while remaining grounded in principles of transparency, emotional safety, and user control.

Critically, this app seeks to enable patients to securely access their mental health records, receive real-time updates, and engage more actively with their care. The team’s design furthermore prioritises clear communication pathways and connections with professionals, with continuity of care in mind. Through this work, the team reposition access to mental health records as a longitudinal patient experience - meriting careful and informed scaffolding before, during, and following access - and highlight opportunities for digital technologies to play a role in enhancing care without undermining professional autonomy nor patient safety.