Mental Health : Sensing & Intervention


In this UbiComp 2023 workshop, we are hoping to bring researchers together to discuss requirements, opportunities, challenges and next steps in developing novel approaches for sensing and intervention in the context of mental health.

Find Out More

UbiComp 2023 Workshop


Mental health and well-being are critical components of overall health: suffering from a mental illness can be both debilitating and life-threatening for individuals experiencing symptoms. Detecting symptoms of mental illness early-on and delivering interventions to prevent and/or manage symptoms can improve health and well-being outcomes. Ubiquitous systems are increasingly playing a central role in uncovering clinically relevant contextual information on mental health. Research shows that these systems can passively measure symptoms and enable opportunities to deliver intervention.

However, despite this potential, the uptake of ubiquitous technologies into mental healthcare has been slow, and a number of challenges need to be addressed towards the effective implementation of these tools. The goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers, practitioners, and industry professionals interested in identifying, articulating, and addressing such issues and opportunities. Following the success of this workshop for the last seven years, we aim to continue facilitating the UbiComp community in both the conceptualization, translation, and implementation of novel approaches for sensing and intervention in the context of mental health.

Call For Participation


We invite submissions in the areas and intersections of mental health, well-being, ubiquitous computing, and human-centered design, including but not limited to:

  • Design and implementation of computational platforms (e.g., mobile phones, instrumented homes, skin-patch sensors) to collect health and well-being data.

  • Design and implementation of feedback (e.g., reports, visualizations, proactive behavioral interventions, subtle or subconscious interventions etc.) for both patients and caregivers towards improved mental health.

  • Design of privacy-preserving strategies for data collection, analysis, and management.

  • Development of methods for sustaining user adherence and engagement over the course of an intervention.

  • Development of robust models that can handle data sparsity and mislabeling issues within mobile sensing and mental health data.

  • Ethical deployments of ubiquitous computing systems in traditionally marginalized communities and developing countries.

  • Ethical frameworks for developing and implementing ubiquitous technologies for mental health.

  • Experience reports from clinical studies in any phase, from early pilot studies to large-scale clinical trials.

  • Identification of opportunities for UbiComp approaches (e.g., digital phenotyping, predictive modeling, micro-randomized intervention trials, adaptive interventions) to better understand factors related to substance abuse.

  • Integration of multimodal data (with potentially clinical data) from various sensor streams for predicting or measuring mental health and well-being.

  • Integration of ubiquitous technologies into existing healthcare infrastructures (e.g., payment models, regulatory frameworks) and policy.

  • Investigation of new methodologies for intervention (e.g., conversational agents, AR/VR applications).

  • Reflections on implementing ubiquitous computing-based technologies to improve mental health and well-being in both clinical and general populations.

Important Dates

  • Submission deadline: June 9, 2023 June 14th, 2023 (11:59 PM EDT)

  • Decisions to authors: June 30th, 2023

  • Camera-ready deadline: July 24, 2023

  • Workshop: October 8th, 2023

Paper Format

We are soliciting 4 types of contributions (see below). Please use the sigconf format. Papers should be in PDF format and not anonymized.

Submission Site

https://new.precisionconference.com/

To submit, please enter the following: Society: SIGCHI, Conference/Journal: UbiComp/ISWC 2023, Track: UbiComp/ISWC 2023 Mental Health: S&I

Submission Options

We are soliciting four types of contributions for the workshop (maximum 6 pages; shorter papers welcome):

  • Scientific papers describing novel technologies, approaches, and studies related to ubiquitous computing and mental health.

  • Challenge papers, in which authors describe a specific challenge to be pitched and discussed at the workshop. These papers often lead to a lively discussion during the workshop.

  • Demonstrations, to facilitate authors demonstrating developed technologies and early systems at the workshop.

  • Critical reflections (new in 2023) of one's own research or existing research at the intersection of ubiquitous computing and mental healthcare. We expect critical reflection papers to contribute towards better research practices in the community.

All submitted papers will be reviewed and judged on originality, technical correctness, relevance, and quality of presentation. We explicitly invite submissions of papers that describe preliminary results or work-in-progress, including early clinical experience. The accepted papers will appear in the UbiComp supplemental proceedings and in the ACM Digital Library.

Tentative Program


Time (Local to Cancun) Event
9:00 AM - 9:30 AM Opening remarks
9:30 AM - 10:30 AM Virtual Keynote speaker I (Trina Histon, PhD - VP of Clinical Product Strategy at Woebot Health)
10:30 AM – 11:30 AM Speed networking and coffee break
11:30 AM – 12:30 PM Paper presentations with Q&A
12:30 PM - 2:00 PM Lunch with workshop attendees - location to be announced day of
2:00 PM – 2:45 PM Paper presentations with Q&A
2:45 PM – 3:30 PM Group discussion/activity
Potential Topics:
  • Future of mobile health: what's next?
  • LLMs in mental health and ubiquitous computing
  • Translational research: getting ubicomp mental health tools into the real-world
  • Funding and publishing strategies: getting your research to have traction and momentum
  • Interdisciplinary collaboration strategies: technical and clinical
  • Entrepreneurship and commercialization
3:30 PM – 4:00 PM Continued group discussion and coffee break
4:00 PM – 5:00 PM Keynote speaker 2 (Jakob Bardram - Professor of Computer Science at the Technical University of Denmark)
5:00 PM – 5:30 PM Closing remarks

Organizers


Contact


If you have any questions, please feel free to send an email to dadler@infosci.cornell.edu.