The UCLA Depression Grand Challenge collaborated with a consortium led by The Digital Health Measurement Collaborative Community (DATAcc) by the Digital Medicine Society (DiMe) to submit a proposal to Wellcome, a global charitable organization that funds discovery research, for the opportunity to conduct scoping research to assess how digital sensing technologies may be leveraged to detect and treat mental health conditions.
The submission responds to a Wellcome request for proposal issued November 2023, which sought to build on the UCLA digital sensing workshop held in March 2023, hosted at UCLA and co-sponsored by Wellcome and the National Institute of Mental Health. The apt collaboration between the DGC, DATAcc by DiMe and other researchers from across the world is a direct outcome of the workshop, where many of the collaboration members met for the first time.
Wellcome will announce which team is selected to conduct the scoping research in March 2024.
Founded in 2019, the Digital Medicine Society (DiMe) is a global non-profit and professional home for all members of the digital medicine community. DiMe drives scientific progress and broad acceptance in digital medicine to enhance public health through a three-pronged approach: 1) convene and collaborate, 2) build and lead and 3) educate and advise. To learn more, visit DiMe’s website.
The Digital Sensing Workshop, sponsored by Wellcome, NIMH and the UCLA Depression Grand Challenge, was held at UCLA on Feb. 28–March 2, 2023. There were five reports generated from the workshop. Workshop organizers included Nelson Freimer from UCLA, Simona Carini from UCSF, Matthew Hotopf from King’s College, David Mohr from Northwestern University and Tanzeem Choudhury from Cornell Tech. Workshop participants represented 29 different universities, businesses and organizations. Review the complete list of participants, learn more at the Depression Grand Challenge newsroom, or read the reports.
Wellcome is the world’s first large-scale, independent research funder to prioritize mental health science at scale, with 200 million pounds ($252.6 million) dedicated to mental health science over five years, according to Miranda Wolpert, director of mental health at Wellcome. Mental health is one of three urgent global health challenges, that Wellcome wants to address in the next 30 years. Visit the Wellcome website.
