by Arshya Vahabzadeh | Jul 29, 2015 | Uncategorized
A digital revolution is coming to mental health, having already established a foothold in business, education, and healthcare. This revolution is, however, not led by angry citizens, but is fueled by the rapid emergence of Exponential technologies. Exponential technologies are those that are growing swiftly in power and availability, and they are opening up entirely novel fields, such as 3-D printing of body organs. These technologies have immense potential to disruptively change how we live our lives, and how we manage our health. Exponential technologies include “wearable” sensors, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics (including drones), synthetic biology, 3-D printing (including the printing of body parts), and human-computer interfaces. We may already have “exponential” technology in our pockets, as even basic smartphones contain considerable computing power, and integrate the functionality of many other historically separate devices. We are on the cusp of an explosion in the number of people using “wearables”, interactive digital devices that can monitor our behavior and/or physiology. There are many examples of wearables, including smartwatches (e.g Apple watch), smartglasses (e.g Google Glass), and activity trackers (e.g Fitbit). When we assess a child’s mental health, we often consider their sleep, appetite, activity levels, and relationship with others. These are all areas where wearable sensor-rich devices can collect data, and in some cases potentially offer some type of intervention. In order for the data to be useful, it must lead to actionable change. The data must give us insights into a child’s functioning, and must therefore undergo an analytic process. Historically, data analysis was largely a human process, but the development of predictive algorithms in many industries has...
by Steven Chan | Jul 29, 2015 | NIH, predictive analytics, sensors
A lot of big names in academia have attended NIH’s Precision Medicine Initiative. Their Workshop of the Precision Medicine Initiative and Working Group of the Advisory Committee to the NIH Director also involves a few select presentations from industry. This has implications in behavioral health as you can see: Saw this in the POLITICO Morning eHealth newsletter today: The NIH will wrap up a Precision Medicine Initiative workshop today in Santa Clara. The event is focusing on mobile and personal technologies. (The agenda: http://1.usa.gov/1g1zJhv) Some notes from Monday: “24/7 sensing from smartphones is here, now,” said Dartmouth College computer scientist Andrew Campbell, in describing his work. Using persistent smartphone sensing data, he said, he can predict students’ GPA within seventeen hundredths of a grade point, and can make a reasonably strong guess about whether a student is depressed or not. – Bonnie Spring, of Northwestern, said that when mixing social networks and wearables, friendship online can predict later success. If a user trying on online communities and wearables to lose weight makes a friend, they’re about 90% to stick around for sixth months, and are more likely to lose weight. But it’s hard to stimulate these relationships. “We’ve only got about 10% of people benefitting,” she...
by Steven Chan | Jul 29, 2015 | contests, Mayo Clinic
A new contest from Mayo Clinic Innovation & Mayo Clinic Ventures with healthcare just came out. Categories involve wellness, smoking/alcohol cessation, and behavior modification Apply here at http://thinkbig2015.istart.org . Deadline is Aug 15, 2015. h/t Arshya Vahabzadeh. Got a great idea to improve health or health care? Help make your dream a reality with the Mayo Clinic THINK BIG Challenge, sponsored by Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation, Mayo Clinic Ventures and AVIA. Entrepreneurs will compete for a total of $100,000 in awards. In addition, Mayo Clinic experts will guide winners for a year as they develop their concepts for market. This year’s Mayo Clinic THINK BIG Challenge themes are: • Got Health? This challenge will focus on healthy people staying healthy and will explore areas such as eating healthy, monitoring risk factors and daily exercise. • I am NOT my Disease. This challenge will tackle the presumption that people are defined by their disease and will explore areas such as access to health data, health literacy and behavior modification Application deadline for the Mayo Clinic THINK BIG Challenge is August 15,...
by Steven Chan | Jul 28, 2015 | contests, emotion detection, face recognition, Partners HealthCare
From the original website: “All innovators welcome! This is an open call to any clinician or clinician-in-training anywhere in the world to submit ideas to use emotion-sensing technologies to improve healthcare. Applications can be in any setting, from the clinic to the classroom to the patient’s home or anywhere else the technology can be applied to improve healthcare.” Boston Globe news...
by John Torous | Jul 28, 2015 | Uncategorized
Mobile technologies like smartphones offer novel tools to track mood and signs of depression. There are hundreds of mood trackers commercially available – yet what do we really know about the mobile mental health data they produce? Are self reported mood symptoms collected in real time equivalent to a standard in person screening exam for depression? Understanding the basics about mobile mental health data, such as how it correlates to more traditional clinical data is the important first step in creating a scientific, evidence based, and clinical approach to mobile mental health tools. Read the full research study at http://mental.jmir.org/2015/1/e8/ … Photo on Flickr by darcyadelaide, used under Creative Commons...
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