Mental Health : Sensing & Intervention (2019)


In this UbiComp 2019 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.

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UbiComp 2019 workshop

September 10th

London


This workshop has already taken place. For the current year's workshop, please go here.

Mental health issues affect a significant portion of the world's population and can result in debilitating and life-threatening outcomes. To address this increasingly pressing healthcare challenge, there is a need to research novel approaches for early detection and prevention. Toward this, ubiquitous systems can play a central role in revealing and tracking clinically relevant behaviors, contexts, and symptoms. Further, such systems can passively detect relapse onset and enable the opportune delivery of effective intervention strategies.

However, despite their clear potential, the uptake of ubiquitous technologies into clinical mental healthcare is rare, and a number of challenges still face the overall efficacy of such technology-based solutions. The goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers interested in identifying, articulating, and addressing such issues and opportunities. Following the success of past workshops, we aim to continue facilitating the UbiComp community in developing 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.

  • Investigating new methodologies for intervention (e.g., conversational agents, AR and VR applications).

  • Automated inference from sensor data of high-level contexts (e.g., environmental, social) indicative of mental health status.

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

  • Development of robust behavioral models that can handle data sparsity and mislabeling issues.

  • Integration of multimodal data from different sensor streams for personalized predictive modeling.

  • Methods for sustaining user adherence and engagement over long periods of time.

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

  • Algorithms to detect and predict psychiatric symptoms or support systems for degenerative and developmental disorders.

  • Deployment in low-income communities and countries.

  • Identifying ways to better integrate ubiquitous technologies into existing healthcare infrastructures and government policy.

Important Dates

  • Submission deadline: July 8th, 2019 (11:59 PM PDT)

  • Decisions to authors: July 10th, 2019

  • Camera-ready deadline: July 12th, 2019

Paper Format

Regular (up to 9 pages) or short (up to 5 pages) paper using SIGCHI format. Papers should be in PDF format and not anonymized.

Submission Site

https://new.precisionconference.com/user/login Please select SIGCHI→UBICOMP2019→Ubicomp 2019 Workshop Mental Health S&I

Submission Options

All accepted papers will be included in the ACM Digital Library as part of the UbiComp conference supplemental proceedings. Papers will be reviewed by the workshop's technical program committee according to criteria regarding a submission's quality, relevance to the workshop's topics, and, foremost, its potential to spark discussions about directions, insights, and solutions in the context of mental health, sensing, and intervention. Research papers, case studies, and position papers are all welcome.

In particular, we encourage authors to keep the following options in mind when preparing submissions:

  • Works-In-Progress: To facilitate sharing of thought-provoking ideas and high-potential though preliminary research, authors are welcome to make submissions describing early-stage, in-progress, and/or exploratory work in order to elicit feedback, discover collaboration opportunities, and generally spark discussion.

  • Challenge Papers: We are also soliciting challenge papers, in which authors describe a specific challenge they would like to pitch and have discussed at the workshop.

Program


Time Event
9:00–9:15 Opening remarks
9:15–10:15 Paper presentations
10:15–11:15 Coffee break and Poster Session
11:15–12:30 Discussion — Challenges
Potential topics:
  • Clinical challenges (recruitment to studies, retention/motivation, collaborations with clinicians)
  • Technical challenges (data collection and management)
  • Regulatory challenges (compliance to the General Data Protection Regulation, privacy)
12:30–14:00 Mentoring lunch with organizers and senior researchers
14:00–14:45 Talk by Dr. Janine Simmons (Social and Affective Neuroscience Program, NIH)
14:45–15:30 Focused session and group discussion
Potential themes:
  • Study design and evaluation
  • IoT and mental health
  • Integrating with clinical care
  • Long term engagement and adherence
  • Best practices for intervention design
15:30–16:00 Coffee break
16:05–17:05 Panel Discussion
Potential topics:
  • Interdisciplinary collaboration strategy
  • Funding strategy
  • Publishing strategy
  • Entrepreneurship and commercialization
17:05–17:15 Closing remarks
18:00 Dinner

Program Committee


  • Sougata Sen (Dartmouth College)

  • Abhinav Mehrotra (Samsung AI Centre)

  • Tobias Kowatsch (ETH Zurich)

  • Tian Hao (IBM Research)

  • Jayden Khakurel (Technical University of Denmark)

  • Steven Tom Jeuris (Technical University of Denmark)

  • Rawan Alharbi (Northwestern University)

Organizers


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Akane Sano

Assistant Professor, Rice University.

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Saeed Abdullah

Assistant Professor, Penn State.

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Jakob E. Bardram

Professor, Technical University of Denmark.

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Sandra Servia

Research Associate, University of Cambridge.

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Elizabeth Murnane

Postdoctoral Scholar, Stanford University.

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Tanzeem Choudhury

Associate Professor, Cornell University.

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Mirco Musolesi

Reader, UCL.

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Varun Mishra

PhD Student, Dartmouth College.

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Giovanna Vilaza

PhD Student, Technical University of Denmark.

Contact


If you have any questions, please feel free to send an email to me@saeedabdullah.com.