Mobile Health, Innovation and Technology
Platform Leadership
Claudio Soares, MD, PhD, FRCPC, MBA
Active Sites
The M-Health Platform operates at the following research sites:
- Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (Toronto, Ontario)
- Dalhousie University (Halifax, Nova Scotia)
- McGill University (Montreal, Quebec)
- Queen’s University (Kingston, Ontario)
- Simon Fraser University (Burnaby, British Columbia)
- St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton (Hamilton, Ontario)
- St. Michael’s Hospital (Toronto, Ontario)
- University of British Columbia (Vancouver, British Columbia)
- University of Calgary (Calgary, Alberta)
- University Health Network (Toronto, Ontario)
- University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, Michigan)
- University of Ottawa (Ottawa, Ontario)
- Western University (London, Ontario)
Platform Overview
Recent advances in wearable user interfaces and the worldwide adoption of mobile devices have created a market for innovative mobile healthcare solutions. The use of mobile technologies, including smartphones, tablets and wearable devices in healthcare is widely known as mobile health, or “M-Health”. There has been an increasing demand for more dynamic, real-time assessments of individuals’ moods, behaviors and activities over time, which reduce the effects of recall bias and limitations that are inherent to traditional psychiatric assessments. CAN-BIND’s M-Health initiatives focus on measurement-based care, wellness promotion, wellness monitoring, and relapse prevention. This platform is committed to developing tools, strategies and technologies to improve patient, research and economic outcomes related to depression, and to fully realize the potential of M-Health in psychiatric research. This includes behavioural sensing and ecological momentary assessments (EMA, or ‘real-time’ assessments), and using M-Health as a vehicle for participant recruitment, user engagement, and knowledge translation (KT) delivery.
The M-Health platform strives to function as an “enabling platform” that ensures CAN-BIND researchers are aware of the numerous possibilities to incorporate M-Health technologies into existing and future studies, provides researchers with technical support and guidance to implement and standardize M-Health components into research protocols, not only for quality assurance, but for integrative analyses, and provides assistance in partnering with M-Health enterprises and partners within and beyond CAN-BIND. Industry partnerships have been developed with Janssen, HealthRhythms and ParticipAid to develop and deliver innovative M-Health solutions for depression. Additional partnerships are in progress. Learn more about partnership opportunities here.