About Vikas

Mental health and wellbeing experience

Vikas photo Vikas is passionate about better outcomes, specialising in managing disparate multidisciplinary technology teams and partnerships within the mental health segment. His affable nature lends to quickly establishing rapport with patients, clinicians and technology teams alike. Over the last 20 years, he has provided consulting and project management services to companies and governments in Australia and internationally.

Key Project Experience

Delivering value, on-time and within budget. Roles: Product Manager | Project Manager | Principal Architect | Senior Developer | Principal Consultant

In 2002, Vikas was involved in designing and building one of the world's most comprehensive clinical mental health systems for ACT Mental Health Services in Canberra, Australia.

He has developed applications for research organisations like kConFab, Peter MacCallum and the Australasian Biospecimen Network Association. He has also designed and managed the development of a visual inventory management solution to manage stem cells for the Australian Stem cell centre.

In 2006 when headspace, Australia's national youth mental health initiative, was founded, Vikas designed the technology and managed the rollout to the first 40 centres. The solution included a national minimum dataset, a clinical system and a dimensional data warehouse for operation analysis and understanding correlations between diagnosis, risk of suicide, substance abuse and early interventions.

Vikas was the Principal Consultant for auditing the National Blood Bank Service's technology (Ministry of Health, Malaysia) and recommending changes. He has also worked with Dr Nor Hayati Ali in providing solution consulting in mental health for Malaysia's national transition from an inpatient-based care model to community-based care (Mantari).

In 2017, everMind re-platformed its mental health ePST(Problem Solving Treatment) solution. This solution was initially built as a desktop application for NASA astronauts to treat anxiety and depression in space. Vikas engaged and supervised a team to rebuild the application using a scalable, multi-tiered, multi-tenanted, mobile-first design.

In 2021, Vikas provided youth engagement support through Mentegram for Sonder's youth mental health services and the Momentum QP Youth Mental Health AOD (Alcohol and Other Drug) and Homelessness Service at Richmond Wellbeing.

In early 2022, he implemented Mentegram at Bethesda Clinic, a 75 bed inpatient and outpatient service in Perth, WA.

In 2022, he helped architect and design usupport, a digital mental health platform and framework for UNICEF.

In 2023, he collaborated with UNICEF Office of Innovation in Stockholm, Sweden, evaluating solutions from international partners for potential implementation on the UNICEF uSupport platform.

In 2024, he continuous supporting the UNICEF uSupport implementations across multiple European and Central Asian countries

Product Management & Product Design

Getting things done right, the first time, keeping value in mind...

Being mindful of the project objectives and having valuable product lifecycle experience, Vikas identifies critical areas of the project that need attention and addresses them promptly. His 20+ years of domain expertise in e-mental health minimises unnecessary experimentation.

Vikas is proficient with international privacy, security, regulations, laws and standards and how it applies to the design of e-mental health applications (e.g. GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA and data sovereignty laws)

Interoperability & Integration Standards

Connectivity between applications and systems

Vikas has an understanding and experience working with international healthcare interoperability standards like HL7, FHIR and SMART on FHIR. He has also managed projects and products using CDA, JSON, REST API's, SMD (Secure Message Delivery) and open source platforms including MySQL, MongoDB and Flutter.

Current roles

Organisation From Role About
UNICEF Europe & Central Asia 2022 International Digital Mental Health Expert Expertise for the development of digital mental health and psychosocial support solutions for adolescents and youth, with a particular focus on young people affected by the Ukraine humanitarian crisis
Mentegram Inc. 2017 CEO A client/patient engagement and health outcomes reporting solution for mental health
everMind 2017 CTO, Technology Advisor An e-Problem Solving Treatment (ePST) solution for mental health
Hashcode 2015 Director & Solution Architect Digital transformation and consulting to healthcare organisations

Examples of work

2016 - Current

AI model for a Digital Therapist

conceptual model - for delivering CBT using a digital therapist

Transforming Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: A Blueprint for building a safe Digital Therapist

Youth with complex-care needs

A solution design model

Use machine learning to understand what happens within a complex service delivery environment and provide clients with complex-care needs the right guidance to navigate the system

Waiting list management

mental health triage - Solution Architecture and program design

Engage clients on a waiting list to see clinicians. Provide information, self management tools and track anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation. Alert monitoring staff if client is declining.

Digital Transformation

of traditional mental health services

Architect, Design, and support the solution, its technology and clinical resources to gradually digitise aspects of traditional clinical service delivery to achieve scalability.

Apps

UI/UX design

Evidence-based, shared decision-making tool for GPs and mental health clients when using antidepressants for depression.