STTR Phase I: Digital Mental Health for Children and Adolescents

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是通过创建一个平台来改善儿童的心理和行为健康，该平台将医疗保健和教育的筒仓统一起来，将儿童和家庭放在第一位。部分由于目前的大流行，越来越需要支持儿童的心理和行为健康。最终用户是美国2800万8-12岁的儿童。该团队正在推进以患者为中心的护理和个性化教育。该平台最初针对8-12岁的儿童进行测试后，计划将平台扩展到整个年龄段，从幼儿到老年人。该平台承诺引人入胜、独立、适应性强、安全和基于研究的支持和学习。该团队希望通过与医疗保健、教育、工业和非营利合作伙伴的战略合作伙伴关系来扩大其市场份额。这个小企业创新研究第一阶段项目的重点是利用技术，包括自然语言处理、机器学习和聊天机器人，向学生、家庭和教育工作者提供有关心理和行为健康的信息，并通过他们基于网络的计算设备从这些群体获得反馈。该项目旨在开发一个在线平台，吸引学生参与，使他们能够利用个人护理资源，旨在建立韧性，并为他们提供根据个人需求定制的支持和信息。这个第一阶段项目的重点是建立一个概念验证平台，通过将交互式健康和健康方法与引人入胜的个性化内容相结合，并通过机器学习技术和工具提供精确的心理健康解决方案。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is improved children’s mental and behavioral health via the creation of a platform that unifies the silos of healthcare and education to put children and families first. Due in part to the current pandemic, there is an increased need to support children’s mental and behavioral health. The end-users are the 28 million children between 8-12 years old in America. The team is advancing patient-centered care and personalized education. After the platform is tested for an initial age group of 8-12-year-olds, the plan is to expand the platform across the age-span, including early childhood through senior adults. The platform promises engaging, self-contained, adaptable, safe, and research-based support and learning. The team expects to grow their market share through strategic partnerships with healthcare, education, industry, and non-profit partners. This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project focuses on leveraging technology, including natural language processing, machine learning, and chatbots, to provide information to students, families, and educators about mental and behavioral health and to get feedback from these groups through their web-based computing devices. This project seeks to develop an online platform that will engage students and allow them to leverage personal care resources aimed at building resilience and providing them access to support and information customized to their individual needs. This Phase I project focuses on building a proof-of-concept platform that provides precision mental health solutions by combining interactive health and wellness methods with engaging content personalized and delivered by machine learning technologies and tools.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.