Digital health
Digital health promises to support citizens to take control of their health, to help health professionals get treatment to more people more efficiently, and to help health systems cope with increasing loads.
We work with patients, carers, health professionals and medical researchers to design effective, engaging and accessible digital health interventions. Our work spans projects on chronic condition monitoring, mental health support, physiological signals, emotion, behaviour change, and smart hospitals. We believe that it is important that digital health interventions are designed to address users’ needs and be engaging.
Projects
-
Orygen Virtual World Project
A virtual world platform bringing to life a new age of digitally enhanced youth mental health care services.
-
Centre for Research Excellence in Digital Technology to Transform Chronic Disease Outcomes
We leverage the ubiquitous availability of smart devices and digital technology to improve the health and wellbeing of the population, particularly those with different chronic conditions.
-
MRFF Million Minds
Bringing family, community, culture and country to indigenous youth mental health care. A multi-university project based in Victoria and Western Australia that is addressing the crisis in Aboriginal youth mental health. We aim to improve young people’s engagement with mental health services.
-
Remote but Connected
A co-created digital platform to enable caregivers to support independent living for people with disability in the face of Covid-19.
-
Personal sensing for mental health and wellbeing
We are researching the use of ubiquitous computing and personal device sensing to monitor mental health and to inform mental health care and digital interventions.
-
Covid-19 mobility analysis
Our group has analysed the mobility data released by Facebook during the Covid-19 crisis. The analysis shows global trends, and national trends for multiple countries.
-
Conceptualising and measuring digital emotion regulation
This project investigates how (and where, when and why) people use digital technologies to shape their emotional states. We plan to develop an evidence-based framework for understanding “digital emotion regulation” in everyday settings.
-
Smart Hospital Living Lab
An umbrella program involving multiple technology projects at the University of Melbourne in partnership with hospitals and industry. The main purpose of the lab is to improve how hospitals run.
-
VR therapy for youth mental health
We are investigating how virtual reality technologies like HTC Vive and Samsung Gear VR can be used to improve young people’s mental health and wellbeing. Our project involves a range of activities such as designing therapeutic VR experiences, testing their effectiveness and acceptability, and exploring how VR can be incorporated into clinical practice.
-
Smartphones for science
We are developing software to enable scientists to use smartphones as a reliable scientific instrument. Our project has a wide range of activities, including how to make it easier to collect data from smartphones, as well as how to analyse sensor data on smartphones and other mobile or wearable gadgets.
-
Moderated online social therapy for youth mental health
This long-running project based at Orygen Youth Health is building and testing online mental health interventions. Our flagship platform is currently being rolled out Victoria-wide to help young people during the Covid pandemic. Staff: Simon D’Alfonso, Reeva Lederman, Greg Wadley. Funding source: Victorian Government, NHMRC
-
Western e-HEaLth patient information portal for Pregnancy (WeHELP)
This project, based at the Melbourne Medical School, designed and trialled a smartphone-based pregnancy support intervention for women and families from culturally and linguistically diverse communities in Melbourne’s western suburbs. Staff: Wally Smith, Greg Wadley
Contact
People
Tilman Dingler, Lecturer in Human Computer Interaction
Vassilis Kostakos, Professor of Human Computer Interaction
Simon D’Alfonso, Lecturer in Digital Health
Jorge Goncalves, Senior Lecturer in Human-Computer Interaction
Wally Smith, Associate Professor- Benjamin Tag, Lecturer