Personal sensing

In This Section

Personal sensing refers to collecting and analysing data from sensors embedded in our everyday devices, such as our phones, wearables and computers, with the aim of identifying an individual’s moment-by-moment contexts, behaviours, thoughts and feelings. These tools present a historically unique opportunity to capture the in-context mental health care needs of young people without any additional burden on them. For example, increased typing speed and pressure detected via mobile phone keypad sensors can indicate situational anxiety, while a reduction in social contact and movement detected via Bluetooth and geolocation sensors can indicate the onset of a depressive episode.

Through our close partnership with The University of Melbourne School of Computing and Information Systems, the team at Orygen Digital has unrestricted access to an advanced personal sensing system called AWARE. This system allows us to passively sense young people’s activities as they go about their daily lives, including movement, social contact, phone use and sleep. We are currently investigating ways of safely and respectfully harnessing these tools to better understand young people’s patterns of behaviour and wellbeing and thereby deliver them the best possible treatment at the best possible moment. If successful, this endeavour has the potential to transform our current models of treatment delivery from a self-service, one-size-fits-most model to one of proactive highly personalised care.

Key projects testing this solution: Prodigy