FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

13th Feb 2023

Mental health prediction technology, Lua Health, begins collaboration with Croatia’s largest psychiatric clinic

International research collaboration aims to improve the detection and measurement of mental health disorders.

Monitoring the progress of patients in psychiatric hospitals can be a time consuming and labour-intensive task. A team of researchers in Ireland is teaming up with doctors in Croatia’s largest psychiatric clinic, University Psychiatric Hospital Vrapče to see whether their technology can help.

Researchers Dr Mihael Arcan and Fionn Delahunty of the Insight SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics at the University of Galway are teaming up with medics in Croatia to see whether their mental health prediction tool Lua Health, can assist doctors in a clinical setting.

Lua Health is a privacy-aware mental health diagnostic sensor that analyses written forms of expression to catch early indicators of mental health issues.

Arcan and Delahunty make up the Lua Health team, which is supported by Enterprise Ireland through its commercialisation fund. They have entered into a research partnership with the University Psychiatric Hospital Vrapče, based in Croatia, where they will collaborate with medics Dr Jakša Vukojević and Dr Aleksandar Savić.

Both teams will explore if monitoring and treatment of patients can be improved using the Lua Health’s AI algorithms. This research aims to explore proof-of-concept approaches to make these tasks faster and more efficient, which will improve patient outcomes and save time for clinicians.

Dr Mihael Arcan said: “We are delighted to work with Jakša and Aleksandar on this important topic and hope to make a difference for the population that suffers with mental health issues.”

Professor Noel O’Connor, CEO of the Insight SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics said: “In Insight, we have many researchers whose work explores how technology can support mental health and wellbeing. To see Lua Health making the transition into a clinical setting is very exciting and we hope that it proves to be a useful tool for healthcare workers and patients.”

The project is co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) under Ireland’s European Structural and Investment Funds Programme 2014-2020.

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Insight SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics

The Insight SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics is one of Europe’s largest data analytics research organisations, with over 450 researchers, more than 80 industry partners and €150+ million in funding. Its research spans Fundamentals of Data Science, Sensing and Actuation, Scaling Algorithms, Model Building, Multi-Modal Analysis, Data Engineering and Governance, Decision Making, and Trustworthy AI.

Insight is made up of four host institutions at DCU, University of Galway, UCC and UCD. Insight’s partner sites are Maynooth University, Tyndall, TCD and UL.