10106497Prototype building, testing and Beta product development for a new digital therapeutic to support adolescents with low mood / depressionClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKAdolescents are suffering a mental-health crisis. Diagnosable conditions, like depression and anxiety, have been on the increase for a decade, exacerbated by the recent upheaval and social isolation caused by the covid pandemic. Health services can't cope with the increase in demand. Outdated therapist-led face to face models are expensive and inefficient. Which means in the UK, 70% of young people with a mental-health condition get no access to evidenced treatment. Digital interventions, accessed through mobiles/tablets, offer a huge opportunity to fill the gap in supply. They can be scaled quickly, are easier to access, and can be delivered at a fraction of the cost of face-to-face treatment. The problem is that the current NHS digital interventions show very poor adherence amongst adolescents. The dominant solutions are adaptations of adult-care that haven't been designed using a people-centred approach and therefore don't meet the needs of digital-native teenagers, who find them unengaging so don't stick with them. At BfB Labs, we can see there is a clear unmet need amongst teenagers for a universally appealing early intervention to prevent, or reverse, low mood and depression. We are developing a new innovation that will deliver a next generation digital therapeutic innovation combining: * Immersive Mobile Gaming to deliver high levels of adherence by replicating the highly engaging user-experiences that adolescents are used to. * Evidenced Therapeutic Approach: Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) is the gold standard recommended treatment for depression * Real-time Data provided securely to help clinicians and carers to monitor progress and make crucial and timely decisions about young people's care journey. This new innovation will deliver significant benefits to the NHS as more young people get access to effective treatment at a lower cost. The wider UK economy will prosper as well - fewer adults will develop severe/chronic mental-health conditions meaning higher productivity. We will take a people-centred approach to co-create concepts with adolescents, then build and test prototypes, before embarking on the full build of a Beta version of the intervention. By the project end we'll be ready to run a pilot of the intervention to gather evidence on its acceptability and usability ready for a full market launch.