This is a proposal for a partnership between engineering and physical science (EPS) researchers - initially in the Universities of Manchester, Nottingham, Sheffield, Lancaster and York - and the MindTech Healthcare Technology Cooperative. The aim is to explore the potential for technology to transform the management and treatment of mental health conditions, identifying underpinning EPS research challenges, and working together to address them. Mental health already accounts for 13% of the NHS budget (the highest proportion for any disease area, and growing rapidly) and is a major cause of reduced quality of life. Most care is in the community, but most of the cost is associated with unplanned hospital admissions resulting from inadequate/ineffective care. There is great potential for technology to transform care in the community - improving diagnosis/stratification, supporting self-care, involving family and friends more effectively, and providing timely prompts and alerts for healthcare professionals. If this potential is to be realised, there are, however, significant EPS challenges to be addressed - in sensing systems, information management, data analytics and human-computer interaction. The model we propose aims to build an integrated community of EPS researchers and users, who will co-develop an EPS research agenda grounded in a clear clinical need, informed by the perspectives, experiences and needs of patients/carers, healthcare commissioning/provider organisations, healthcare professionals and industry (both technology and healthcare, ranging from SMEs to large multinational companies). The partnership will focus on four broad clinical areas of major societal importance, aligned with the MindTech HTC agenda: serious mental illness, mood and affective disorder, dementia, and developmental disorders - each with clinical leadership - drawing on mental health expertise in both Nottingham (the MindTech HTC) and Manchester. We currently identify four areas of challenging EPS research required to underpin the development of effective technologies for managed self-care of mental health conditions: sensing systems for acquiring rich, 'real-time' longitudinal data (new sensing technologies, sensor systems); information management methods for incrementally integrating and linking heterogeneous information and data (integrating and linking data from different sources, information representation); data analytics for extracting predictive outcome models, particularly from temporal data (modelling longitudinal data, modelling populations of temporal models, image computing; and human-computer interaction methods for the managed self-care setting (collaborative decision-support).

Global and local (UK) populations are ageing and this has contributed to an increase in demand for health and welfare services. Chronic and long-term conditions are also on the increase, leading to increased costs of health and social care and wide-ranging changes to the nature of health interventions. As a result, it is increasingly desirable to keep people out of hospital, treating people nearer to, or in their home. For reasons of cost, convenience and dignity it is also sometimes desirable that patients engage in self-care or carer-delivered care. Care independence has long been a feature of some diagnosis and treatment regimes: most medications are taken by the patient themselves; diabetic patients regularly monitor blood sugar levels and inject themselves. This work aims to extend these concepts of self care to a boarder range of health conditions, and their associated technologies, that are not currently expected to be delivered by the patient or their carer. The network consists of four academic centres: * Cambridge Engineering Design Centre, University of Cambridge; * CHI+MED, Collaboration led by University College London (UCL); * Loughborough Design School, Loughborough University and * Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design, Royal College of Art and three Healthcare Technology Cooperatives (HTCs) * Devices for Dignity, (D4D) Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust; * MindTech HTC, Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust and Institute of Psychiatry and * Brain Injury HTC, Cambridge Universities Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. This network of design researchers and healthcare technology specialists will carry out a series of design-led pilot projects to explore solutions to care independence challenges. The aim of the pilot projects is to encourage innovation in order to find radical new ways of using technologies to allow sustainable patient independence while maintaining clinical quality, safety and patient and carer experience while reducing costs. The pilot projects will be need driven and will be selected as part of the networking with NIHR Healthcare Technology Cooperatives. The pilot project outputs will be conceptual designs that can be further developed (not funded by the network) or definitions of research need that can be developed into research proposals.

The current extent of ill mental health is estimated to cost the UK economy £105 billion per year in healthcare expenditure and lost revenue. Addressing mental health is therefore a clearly articulated priority for government. The broad use of ICT services, social media and smartphone applications has an increasingly important role to play in the delivery of clinical mental health services and in supporting societal mental health and wellbeing more generally. Indeed, for large sections of the population, and younger people in particular, the use of Social Computing technologies such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube is already informally entwined with every facet of everyday life including health and wellbeing. The expectation by the healthcare community, and by commercial software developers, therefore is that digital mobile and social technology can provide compelling, scalable and convenient access to information, social and peer support, as well as therapy and shared self-monitoring tools and services. However, there are a numerous difficult challenges associated with the design, deployment, use and evaluation of such technology in mental health settings which must be solved using multidisciplinary, rigorous and scientific methods. The research field of Social Computing broadly focusses on the user-centred design, implementation, use, and evaluation of technologies that consider social context in an increasingly digitally-connected society. The UK's Social Computing research community therefore has a wealth of experience and expertise that is relevant to, but not typically directed at, mental health services and systems. This network will address issues of support, coordination and collaboration in this context and bring together two communities: (i) engineering and physical sciences (EPS) researchers under the broad, and inclusive, banner of Social Computing covering sub-fields of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), ubiquitous and mobile computing, and web science (ii) clinical scientists, healthcare professionals, commercial partners, charities, user groups and patients who are concerned with mental health and wellbeing. The network will work closely with the NIHR MindTech Healthcare Technology Co-operative (HTC) centre to engage in a range of coordinated scientific, technological, management and clinical activities to realise its overarching aim of pump-priming future UK capacity to deliver internationally-leading research at the boundaries between social computing and mental healthcare.

The current extent of ill mental health is estimated to cost the UK economy £105 billion per year in healthcare expenditure and lost revenue. Addressing mental health is therefore a clearly articulated priority for government. The broad use of ICT services, social media and smartphone applications has an increasingly important role to play in the delivery of clinical mental health services and in supporting societal mental health and wellbeing more generally. Indeed, for large sections of the population, and younger people in particular, the use of Social Computing technologies such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube is already informally entwined with every facet of everyday life including health and wellbeing. The expectation by the healthcare community, and by commercial software developers, therefore is that digital mobile and social technology can provide compelling, scalable and convenient access to information, social and peer support, as well as therapy and shared self-monitoring tools and services. However, there are a numerous difficult challenges associated with the design, deployment, use and evaluation of such technology in mental health settings which must be solved using multidisciplinary, rigorous and scientific methods. The research field of Social Computing broadly focusses on the user-centred design, implementation, use, and evaluation of technologies that consider social context in an increasingly digitally-connected society. The UK's Social Computing research community therefore has a wealth of experience and expertise that is relevant to, but not typically directed at, mental health services and systems. This network will address issues of support, coordination and collaboration in this context and bring together two communities: (i) engineering and physical sciences (EPS) researchers under the broad, and inclusive, banner of Social Computing covering sub-fields of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), ubiquitous and mobile computing, and web science (ii) clinical scientists, healthcare professionals, commercial partners, charities, user groups and patients who are concerned with mental health and wellbeing. The network will work closely with the NIHR MindTech Healthcare Technology Co-operative (HTC) centre to engage in a range of coordinated scientific, technological, management and clinical activities to realise its overarching aim of pump-priming future UK capacity to deliver internationally-leading research at the boundaries between social computing and mental healthcare.

Promoting improved understanding of how children's daily lives are influenced by the digital world that now surrounds them and how they experience family, peer and school life as a result represents a substantial challenge and opportunity relative to facilitating positive mental health and development for children and young people. Historically, researchers have emphasised the role of supportive parenting and positive school experiences (including peer relationships) as primary social environmental influences on children's mental health, with most interventions targeting family and school-based influences aimed at remediating poor mental health outcomes for children and young people. It is increasingly recognised that the digital environment constitutes a new dimension or common denominator to these traditional agencies of socialisation influence on children's mental health. Yet, little progress has been made in equipping parents, teachers and the professional agencies that work with families and schools with new knowledge that harnesses potential strengths while offering protection from substantial risks posed to children by the digital world. How do we equip parents, teachers, practitioners, policy makers and youth themselves with information, support and resources that promotes positive mental health in a contemporary (and future) digital age? Addressing this core challenge represents the primary objective of our multi-disciplinary e-Nurture network. While significant advances have been made in relation to highlighting and understanding the genetic and biological underpinnings of poor mental health and mental health disorders in recent years, it is recognised that the social environments children experience and interact with remain a substantial influence on their positive and negative mental health trajectories (even when genetic factors are considered). Three primary areas of social environmental influence on children's mental health have dominated past research and practice in this area. First, family socialisation processes, specifically parenting practices are recognised as a substantive influence on children's mental health. Second, peer influences are noted as an important influence on children's mental health. Third, school-based factors are recognised as a further influence on children's mental health and development. Increasingly, the digital environment is recognised as a factor that both infuses traditional agencies of socialisation for children and that can influence children directly. Policy makers have recently directed significant attention to the prevalence rates and support needs among children and young people who experience mental health problems. The digital environment and its potential for positive and negative influences on children's well-being, mental health and development has also received substantial research, policy and media attention. Building on this policy platform, the primary objectives of our network are to (1) explore how the digital environment has changed the ways in which children experience and interact with family, school and peer-based influences and what these changes mean for children's mental health, (2) identify how we can recognise and disentangle digital risks from opportunities when working with families, schools and professional agencies in developing intervention programmes to improve mental health outcomes for children and young people, and (3) identify how we effectively incorporate and disseminate this new knowledge to engage present and future practice models and the design and development of digital platforms and interventions aimed at promoting mental health and reducing negative mental health trajectories for young people. The network will engage a collaborative, cross sectoral approach to facilitating impacts by directly engaging academic, charity, industry, policy and front-line beneficiaries (e.g. families, parents, schools, teachers, children and young people).