What we do
About our project
PROTECt ME: PROactive TEChnology-supported prevention and MEntal health in adolescence
Societal problem. 13 - 25% of Dutch youth (aged 12 - 25) suffers from depression or anxiety. Such mental health problems have long-lasting negative effects, including educational dropout, worse physical health, and increased inequality. Mental health problems cost Dutch society 2 billion euro annually. Adequate and timely identification and treatment are currently impossible, due to long waiting lists, time-consuming monitoring procedures, and the lack of personalized, proactive prevention strategies. Hence, systematic changes in our approach to youth mental health are sorely needed.
Scientific ambition: Optimizing the well-being of Dutch youth aged 12 to 25 by:
(WP 1) improving early identification of mental health problems, using cutting edge real-time measures, smartphone and wearable technology, and data modeling,
(WP 2) improving decision making of who needs which intervention and when, combining professional expertise with artificial intelligence,
(WP 3) creating and evaluating new technology-driven proactive interventions (e.g., eHealth).
Our integrated approach involves stakeholders and end users in each step (WP 4); and builds a sustainable infrastructure and collaboration for convergence and impact (WP 5).
Output, outcome, impact. Apart from obtaining ground-breaking scientific insights into the antecedents of mental health problems, we will immediately provide new ways to improve detection, decision making and intervention, new methods and approaches, and user-friendly and cost-effective solutions for youth and professionals. In the long-term, this results in proactive, personalized, accessible, and cost-effective prevention of mental health problems, based on a sustainable business proposition. The ultimate impact will be a decrease in adolescents entering specialized mental health care, shorter waiting lists, a significant reduction in societal costs of adolescent mental health problems, and, most importantly, the optimal well-being of all youth.
Our research focus
We hypothesize that new technology and innovative methods will allow us to:
1) identify and diagnose adolescents at risk at a much earlier stage, supporting a better outcome;
2) improve decision making on who needs to be referred to which intervention, and;
3) create and evaluate technologically driven interventions to support youth in proactive, personalized, and timely manners.
These major objectives are achieved by converging cutting-edge novel technology and methods from behavioral sciences, data-science and human centered design with emerging clinical needs and opportunities in practice. In doing so, we will take a world-leading role in transforming big data per person - to big solutions for society. This program, is built on the following technological/scientific breakthroughs (each addressed in a dedicated Work Package (WP):
WP1) We will introduce a new toolbox with behavioral sciences methods to monitor real-time functioning of adolescents with smartphone apps – and create a center of methodological and clinical expertise around these so-called experience sampling methods. This will allow us to identify whether a given individual is at risk in real-time, in real settings, leading to earlier diagnostics in WP1.
WP2) We will utilize the increasing possibilities of combining professional expertise, the power of AI-aided algorithms from data-science with novel methods for user-centered design in WP2.
WP3) Merging existing clinical data and new types of real-time data with state-of-the-art AI techniques is unprecedented and can be directly translated to new solutions for clinical identification, self-monitoring and prevention in WP3.
WP4) We will deliver a novel toolbox for transformative research on depression and anxiety with adolescents from diverse backgrounds and with varying risk profiles (e.g., from low to high risk) and other stakeholders as co-researchers in WP4.
Funds & Grants
Collaborations
Collaboration outside of Erasmus MC
- Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Erasmus University Rotterdam.
- Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics & Computer Science, TU Delft.
- Erasmus School of Economics (ESE), Erasmus University Rotterdam.
- Technology, Policy and Management, TU Delft.
- Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, TU Delft.
See more information here.
Our team
- Prof. Dr. Loes Keijsers.
- Dr. ir. Willem-Paul Brinkman.
- Dr. Joyce Weeland.
- Prof. Pilar Garcia-Gomez.
- Dr. Annabel Vreeker.
- Dr. Jeroen Legerstee.
- Dr. Olya Kudina.
- Drs. Mathieu Gielen.
- Prof. Marcus Specht.
- Dr. Ujwal Gadiraju.
- Prof. Dr. Maartje Luijk.
- Vera Scheepens.
- Zeta Xouri.
- Caroline Figueroa.
- Asli Gulmus.
- Dr. Niko Vegt.
- Dr. Lianne de Vries.
- Esra de Groot.
- Michael Grauwde.
- Frederique van Krugten.
- Rick van Loghum.
- Shannon Dickson.
- Nele Albers.
- Mohammed AI Owayyed.
- Garret Allen.
- Sarah Mbawa.
