Major depression is currently the fourth disorder worldwide in terms of disease burden, and is expected to be the disorder with the highest disease burden in high-income countries by 2030. Estimated costs of depression are annually 177 and 147 million euro per 1 million inhabitants for major and minor depression respectively. Current treatment methods for depressive disorders can reduce the burden of this disease with about one third.

The ICT4Depression consortium will develop an ICT-based system for use in primary care that will further improve patient outcomes and increase access to treatment. All technologies to be developed will be beyond state of the art and include:
1) devices for monitoring activities and biosignals in a non-intrusive and continuous way,
2) treatments for depression and automatic assessment of the patient using mobile phone and web based communication, 3) computational methods for reasoning about the state of patients, progress of therapies, and the risk of relapse and 4) a flexible system architecture for monitoring and supporting people using continuous observations and feedback via mobile phone and the web. The ICT4Depression system is flexible and can easily be adapted for treatment of other mental diseases. The project will be carried out by an interdisciplinary consortium with 5 (research) organizations and 2 SME companies at the forefront of Artificial and Ambient Intelligence, wireless bio-signal sensors, activity monitoring using cell phones, monitoring patient compliance with drug prescriptions, service oriented application for the health care domain, psychology, psychiatry, and internet-based psychological treatment. The project will boost European leadership in ICT-based treatment of mental illness and will provide ample opportunities for commercial exploitation.

Policy Context

The project will develop User-friendly ICT tools to enhance self-management and effective treatment of depression in the EU, as part of the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission.

The partners of the project are the following:

- CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION FOR HIGHER EDUCATION RESEARCH AND PATIENT - CARE (FACULTY OF SCIENCE), Amsterdam,  Netherlands
- LINKOPINGS UNIVERSITY, Linkopings, Sweden
- PHARMIONIC SYSTEMS, Sion, Switzerland INSTITUTO DE ENGENHARIA DESISTEMAS E COMPUTADORES DO PORTO (INESC), Porto, Portugal
- UNIVERSITY OF LIMERICK, Limerick, Ireland
- PLUX WIRELESS BIOSIGNALS SA, Tortosendo, Portugal
- GGZ inGeest, Netherlands

Description of the way to implement the initiative

The project consists of 7 Work packages:

Work package 1 (WP1)

The general objective of work package 1 is the adaptation of existing psychological treatments aimed at different phases of (the treatment of) depression in such a way that they can be used as self-administered treatments through the internet and mobile phones. These psychological treatments can be applied consecutively in the treatment of depression in primary care patients. The basic principles of the treatments will be identified and described (to be used for the computational assessment in WP3) and the interactions options with the patient will be described (both input from the patient as well as feedback to the patient). These specifications will be used to describe one or more usage scenarios for the system that makes clear how a patient and caregiver would interact with the system.

Work package 2 (WP 2)

In work package 2 the biomedical sensors, medicine intake monitors as well as mobile phone application will be developed for progression monitoring of the patient. In addition, an objective is the interpretation of this information such that useful information is obtained to measure the progress of therapy.

Specific objectives

• Task 2.1: Develop techniques to measure on a real time basis whether medicine has been taken, in addition, algorithms will be developed which analyse this information, and translate it to information which can be used for progress of therapy.
• Task 2.2: The development of techniques to measure activities being conducted using a mobile phone. Hereby, sensing devices in the form of accelerometers as well as questionnaires will be developed suitable for deployment on the cell phone. Furthermore analysis methods which translate this information to a more abstract level will be developed.
• Task 2.3: In task 3 the objective is to develop non-intrusive biomedical sensors, and algorithms which translate this information to information on such a level that it can be used to measure progress of therapy.
• Task 4: In task 4 the objective is to integrate the three measuring devices and validate the approaches that have been developed.

Work package 3 (WP 3)

The overall objective of the work package is to interpret the information which has been received from the sensors, and give appropriate feedback to both the patient as well as the caretaker. This not only includes sending messages based upon progress of therapy, but also the selection of the therapy. This makes the system much more flexible, and enables the patient to follow the most appropriate therapy given the behaviour observed by the system.

Work package 3 has resulted in two public deliverables so far.

Work package 4 (WP 4)

The main objective of work package 4 is to create the overall architecture of the ICT4Depression depression support system. This involves the integration of the methods developed in WP3 and WP4, and the deployment of the overall system in the primary care.

Work package 5 (WP 5)

The general objective of WP5 is to test the system with actual users. This will be done in two phases: first, a short pilot study will be conducted to test the technical setup and tune the system towards the human users; second, we will conduct a study in which the feasibility of the ICT4Depression self-management system - in terms of process and clinical effectiveness- is examined, as part of the treatment of people with a depression within primary care. We will apply a pre-test- post-test design and 100 participants will be recruited among primary care patients of general practitioners both in the Netherlands (50) and Sweden (50). Questionnaires will be administered with patients who use the ICT4Depression self-management system as part of their treatment for depression in primary care, before the start of the treatment, as well as 3 months after treatment.

Work package 6 (WP 6)

Dissemination of the output of the ICT4Depression consortium and the exploitation of the activities and the results obtained.

Work package 7 (WP 7)

Smooth management of the project to ensure cohesion and compliance with the Project Plan as presented here.

Technology solution

Main results, benefits and impacts

The ICT4Depression consortium will develop an ICT-based system for use in primary care that will further improve patient outcomes and increase access to treatment. All technologies to be developed will be beyond state of the art and include:

1) devices for monitoring activities and biosignals in a non-intrusive and continuous way,

2) treatments for depression and automatic assessment of the patient using mobile phone and web based communication,

3) computational methods for reasoning about the state of patients, progress of therapies, and the risk of relapse, and

4) a flexible system architecture for monitoring and supporting people using continuous observations and feedback via mobile phone and the web. The ICT4Depression system is flexible and can easily be adapted for treatment of other mental diseases.

The project will be carried out by an interdisciplinary consortium with 5 (research) organisations and 2 SME companies at the forefront of Artificial and Ambient Intelligence, wireless biosignal sensors, activity monitoring using cell phones, monitoring patient compliance with drug prescriptions, service oriented application for the health care domain, psychology, psychiatry, and internet-based psychological treatment. The project will

Lessons learnt

This field will be completed by the submitter when the lessons learnt have been identified and understood.