Personalised health is a European priority and one of the strategic research areas for Horizon 2020. It holds the potential of reducing the ever-increasing costs of institutional healthcare across Europe and worldwide. Personal Technologies for Affective Health (AffecTech), advances the state-of-the-art of personal health technologies for affective disorders, estimated to be the highest-ranking cause of disease in the Western world by 2020. Among these, anxiety, depression and bipolar disorders are the most prevalent, incurring the largest social costs. AffecTech integrates outstanding yet fragmented expertise in developing personal systems for mental health with the most influential models of emotion regulation from health and clinical psychology. The specific aim is to support self-understanding and successful adoption of adaptive emotion regulation strategies.
AffecTech builds on exceptional European and North American expertise from both academic and private sectors to provide personalised health research with a timely and much needed momentum to address the pressing social challenge of emotional wellbeing and health. With respect to socio-economic impact, the project has contributed to increasing awareness of mental health among the larger public through an active presence in social media. Most of the prototypes currently developed involve user studies for requirements gathering or co-participatory design, which in turn offer additional opportunities to engage with end users, and sensitise them to the issues of mental health research. The project team have also started exploring the licencing implications of the hardware they are developing, for example with respect to the DIY kit of smart material and actuators for the digital fabrication of novel affective prototypes.
Learn more: http://www.affectech.org/
