A new digital mental-health screening tool designed to help police better respond to people in crisis is set to launch in Kamloops next week, with RCMP officers and BC Highway Patrol members expected to begin using HealthIM on May 27.

The evidence-based app is part of a provincewide rollout aimed at improving police response during mental-health and substance-use related emergencies, while strengthening communication between officers, hospitals and healthcare workers.

“Mental health and substance use challenges, as we know, are fundamentally health issues, but they can quickly escalate into public safety emergencies,” Vernon-Lumby MLA Harwinder Sandhu said during a news conference Thursday announcing the Interior expansion.

“In these unpredictable moments, police are often the first ones to arrive on scene. Not only do these situations require timely response, they require situational awareness, empathy and quick judgment.”

The rollout includes Kamloops RCMP, along with detachments in Merritt, Salmon Arm, Clearwater, Barriere, Ashcroft, Chase, Logan Lake, Revelstoke and several other Thompson-Shuswap communities.

HealthIM is installed on encrypted RCMP-issued phones and guides officers through approximately 20 screening questions while they interact with a person in crisis. Officers can quickly assess risk factors, behavioural triggers and safety concerns while also documenting de-escalation strategies that may have worked during previous interactions.

Staff Sgt. Chris Dodds, the RCMP Southeast District project lead for HealthIM, said the app gives frontline officers a structured and standardized way to assess mental-health calls while improving patient handoffs to hospitals.

“What it is, it’s a tool in our tool belt to assist us,” Dodds said.

“If we apprehend, we hit apprehend on the app and that translates all of that information we just gathered — the information about the client, their triggers, risks and concerns — right to the emergency department in real time before we even transport.”

Dodds said hospital staff are then able to prepare before the patient arrives, improving safety for healthcare workers and reducing delays in emergency departments.

“The medical staff can prepare themselves for whatever is about to come,” he said. “It makes for a much quicker handoff.”

According to the Province, jurisdictions already using HealthIM have reported a 46 per cent decrease in Mental Health Act apprehensions, a 39 per cent reduction in hospital wait times and a 37 per cent increase in hospital admission rates.

Sandhu said the increase in admissions is viewed as a positive outcome because many people experiencing serious mental-health crises often do not voluntarily seek treatment.

“Often people facing mental-health challenges and crisis, they don’t seek help and they don’t admit themselves,” she said. “This helps to keep everyone safe, most importantly persons dealing with that crisis.”

Police agencies across B.C. have increasingly become frontline responders to mental-health emergencies. Superintendent Michelle Tansey with the BC Association of Chiefs of Police said approximately one in five police interactions in B.C. now involves someone experiencing a mental-health crisis.

“These are not routine calls for service,” Tansey said. “They are often deeply human, emotionally charged situations involving individuals and families during some of the most vulnerable and difficult moments in their lives.”

Tansey said HealthIM represents a shift away from a strictly enforcement-based response toward a more coordinated healthcare-focused approach.

“What they require is a coordinated response with systems and a health-focused care and intervention that is outside of the criminal justice system whenever possible,” she said.

Interior Health officials say the app also allows emergency departments to better prepare for incoming patients experiencing mental-health or substance-use crises.

“When a member of our community seeks emergency care during a mental-health or substance-use crisis, it can be one of the scariest and most personal moments they’ll ever face,” said Chris Simms, executive director of clinical operations with Interior Health.

“Knowing police officers have the tool to help them respond and communicate with our emergency departments and hospitals marks a major step forward in our health system.”

As of May 19, Dodds said HealthIM had already been used 272 times by RCMP officers in the Southeast District, including 133 Mental Health Act apprehensions involving people transported for further assessment and care.

The Province says it provides $2 million annually to the BC Association of Chiefs of Police to support the rollout of HealthIM across B.C. police agencies and RCMP detachments.