Datamind blog. Published 19th November.
Hi, I’m Pauline Whelan, and I work with DATAMIND, developing digital approaches to enhance mental health research. I am a researcher in digital health based at the University of Manchester and at Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust. I am really interested in how we can use digital approaches to improve mental health and wellbeing.
DATAMIND brings together people interested in developing new approaches to solving old problems in mental health research. It is a community of people and projects offering different perspectives on how we can develop the future of mental health research.
My Experience with DATAMIND
Working with colleagues across the DATAMIND family has allowed us to develop new data-driven approaches to enhancing clinical trials. With DATAMIND’s support, our team has developed standardised digital tools that people can use to record their mental health data alongside their physical health data when participating in a clinical trial. These tools are designed to be easily accessible and available for widespread use by researchers all over the world. We have also explored how we can better monitor and report equity metrics of clinical trial data. These equity metrics will help researchers explore how closely the participants in their studies represent the underlying or target population. Working with DATAMIND has enabled us to engage multiple perspectives on how we can best enhance clinical trials using data-driven approaches.
Impact of Our Collaboration
Our digital tool developed through DATAMIND will support researchers to easily collect mental health data in physical health studies and to increase our understanding about the links between physical and mental health. Through the DATAMIND project, we have made digital tools to collect mental health data freely available for any researcher anywhere in the world to download and use.
Additionally, we are in the process of developing an equity audit tool for clinical trial data. The tool helps researchers and clinical trial managers visualise how their participant sample is representative (or not) of the underlying or target clinical population. This tool can help researchers target their trial recruitment more equitably and help us assess the equity of ongoing clinical trials.
Looking to the Future
Our plans for DATAMIND in the future are to further develop digital tools to enhance the delivery of clinical trials. Key to this will be disseminating the work we have achieved widely to ensure all researchers can benefit from what we have developed for DATAMIND. We will also be developing the equity audit tool and preparing for a wide scale roll-out and testing across multiple clinical trials.
Final Thoughts
One of the huge benefits of being involved in DATAMIND is the size and scope the DATAMIND family. Being involved in DATAMIND has been a brilliant opportunity to learn from other people interested in using digital and data approaches to improve mental health research.
If you are interested in how we can use mental health data more effectively or how digital approaches can support mental health research, get in touch at datamind@swansea.ac.uk