Lay summary
If left untreated, nearly half of people who have had a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI, including concussions) experience functional deficits for many years. Yet in New Zealand Emergency Departments, many mTBIs are not diagnosed, advice is highly variable and there are considerable delays and ethnic inequities in access to concussion clinics. This project will determine whether implementation of a digitalised Brain Injury Screening and Decision-Making Tool called WayfindTBI can improve clinical care and patient recovery following mTBI. Effectiveness will be determined based on screening rates, follow up in the community, time to service access, self-reported recovery and health care costs before and after implementation. Barriers and facilitators to embedding WayfindTBI into clinical practice will be identified to inform how to expand the new way of working across the health system. WayfindTBI is likely to yield immediate benefits for patients and their whānau, with potential cost-savings to health care funders.