Because there is a high barrier to entry for researchers hoping to deploy mobile-health technologies effectively and at scale, the Sage Digital Health Catalyst Program helps to bootstrap innovative research projects through a yearly competition. After several rounds of judging and a pitch session, the CREATIV Lab’s Brighten project emerged a winner!

Led by Pat Areán, PhD, and managed by Kathy Ringwood, MSW, Research Coordinator, the UW CREATIV Lab will be working with Sage Bionetworks to build out a mobile recruitment and assessment app for depression. The app, called Brighten, is based on previous NIMH-funded research the lab conducted to evaluate mobile treatments for depression. Brighten will include features such as cognitive assessment, daily questions about mood and functioning, weekly assessments and will extra passive, phone-based data as well as allow participants to share data from electronic health records. This app will be used in a large scale study if 12,000 adults undergoing treatment for depression, to see if you smart-phone can predict the chances of people responding to different types of depression interventions. Winning applications receive a variety of resources including pro bono consulting and free data hosting. Sage Bionetworks is a nonprofit focused on the development and implementation of collaborative practices to support the integration of data science into biomedical research.