Wellcome Data Prizes: how can we use data to transform mental health interventions?
Wellcome is running a series of data prizes to use the power of data to transform how science solves urgent health challenges facing everyone. Using data that already exist, participants will co-create digital solutions for one of the three urgent global health challenges that Wellcome wants to address in the next 30 years. They are climate & health, infectious disease and mental health. Successful outputs will be new digital tools (for example new software packages, algorithms or scripts) which help address the health problem in question.
Here are three important features of Wellcome Data Prizes:
- Reaching out beyond the usual suspects: Solving urgent global health problems requires the right skills, (lived) experience, different perspectives. Yet, most research on health happens within established research communities and disciplines. We will reach out to people from beyond the usual networks interested in the issue; and we will bring together ideas from people with a range of perspectives, experiences and data related skills.
- Putting co-creativity at the heart: Our data prizes have been designed to make sure participation and involvement are at the centre of the projects we fund. We will value lived experience and partner with the communities we’re working with throughout the data prize.
- Raising awareness around the health challenge and inspiring solutions: We will talk about our work openly, share learnings, success stories and difficulties encountered throughout. We want to increase awareness of the health challenge and inspire policy and decision makers about possible digital approaches to address it.
Our first data prize is a joint initiative between two teams at Wellcome: Data for Science and Health and Mental Health. It will focus on transforming and improving mental health interventions for youth anxiety and depression. We are very excited to be partnering with Social Finance and DataKind and look forward to benefiting from their experience on using data and technology for social impact.
Here are some of our goals for the Wellcome Data Prize in Mental Health:
- Gaining fresh insights from existing data: We will use existing mental health related data to understand which “active ingredients” prevent, treat, stop relapse or manage ongoing anxiety and depression in young people (aged 14–24). Throughout the set-up phase in 2021, we will identify and secure access to relevant data sources. We will prioritise datasets that offer insights into a variety of areas of young people’s lives and those which could improve our understanding of the social and environmental context of mental health. We are interested in any data that could be used in a new way to understand the “active ingredients” better. This includes data sources created outside of academia, such as those which contain data on medication use, access to green space, financial situation, cognitive processes, genetics and personal relationships.
- Building a multidisciplinary mental health data community: We want this data challenge to serve as the perfect example of how people with mental health research backgrounds, data expertise and lived experience, can work together to create solutions for youth anxiety and depression. Young people’s priorities will be at the heart of the data prize’s scope and design, as well as during the co-creation of digital tools.
- Creating trustworthy digital tools with tangible impact: Our goal is to create open source, digital tools that have a real impact on youth anxiety and depression. We aim to create a blueprint on how trustworthiness can be embedded in the creation of digital tools for mental health; and to successfully balance the needs for privacy of those sharing their data with the needs of open science.
Over the next two months as part of our initial scoping phase, we will work with Social Finance and DataKind to explore the possibilities of running Wellcome’s Data Prize in Mental Health in India or South Africa, in addition to the UK. We will be reaching out to relevant communities in these countries to inform this scoping phase. Please do get in touch (ContactDataForScienceAndHealth@wellcome.ac.uk) if you think the objectives of the data prize in mental health are relevant to your network or may know of data sources aligned with our aims!
(Please note that a first version of this blog was published here)
