Scalable TRansdiagnostic Early Assessment of Mental Health (STREAM)

Lead Research Organisation: University of Reading
Department Name: Sch of Psychology and Clinical Lang Sci

Abstract

Worldwide, over 250 million children are at risk of not obtaining their developmental potential due to exposure to adverse circumstances. India and Malawi house some of the most disadvantaged populations in the world, with over 10% of all children aged 2 to 9 years estimated to have neurodevelopmental disorders. However, social and economic barriers to access qualified health personnel mean that most of these children do not receive any assessment of neurodevelopment or a clinical diagnosis when needed. Moreover, many parents are unaware of developmental milestones, so clinical opinion is sought only when symptoms become more pronounced and begin to impact daily life with a lost opportunity for early interventions. This avoidable delay is an unfolding tragedy in light of evidence showing that frontline worker delivered interventions can lead to better behavioural and social outcomes and improve long term developmental trajectories. Scalable methods to assess child neurodevelopment and mental health would promote early referral to specialist facilities, ultimately connecting families with affordable, community-based interventions. Directly measuring neurodevelopment allows us to identify the most vulnerable children as early as possible, allowing limited resources to be focused on those most likely to benefit from preventive approaches. Taken together, focusing on brain development in early childhood is critical to revolutionising global mental health of young children.
We will realise this goal by developing a Scalable Transdiagnostic Assessment of Mental Health (STREAM), a mobile platform usable in the home or in a routine health facility by non-specialist workers. STREAM will be delivered on a tablet PC and will collect different types of data from 4000 children in India and Malawi. First, parents will be asked simple questions about their child's everyday behaviour, based on established questionnaires that have been validated in low income settings. Second, gamified tasks designed to measure motor, social, and cognitive abilities will be administered on the tablet. Additionally, novel low-cost eye-tracking technology on the same tablet PC will be used to monitor the child's eye movements in simple tasks, such as those assessing preference for social versus non-social images, and measuring how quickly attention shifts to new objects appearing on the screen. Finally, a segment of parent and child interaction will be recorded using the inbuilt camera, and used to code for signs of atypical behaviour. This combination of multiple measures will provide independent channels of data collected on a single platform, significantly improving on current assessment methods that often rely on one technique and expensive, highly skilled but scarce human resources. STREAM will be designed such that it will require minimal training to be administered by non-specialist workers in low and middle income countries, thereby promoting task-sharing, a concept endorsed by the World Health Organization to reach wider populations. This task-sharing approach reduces the burden on the small number of highly-skilled mental-health and child development professionals in these low resource settings. STREAM can also help develop community awareness and, in the longer term, address the barrier of low demand for services in these areas. The development and application of the STREAM platform involves collaborations across the breadth of basic and applied sciences. Our network comprising clinicians, neuroscientists, public health specialists and data scientists spread across UK, India and Malawi is optimally suited to leading this challenge because of our combined expertise deploying novel technologies to measure early childhood neurodevelopment in low-resource settings.

Technical Summary

Monitoring child neurodevelopment is essential for early identification of children faltering in their developmental trajectory and their eventual referral to effective interventions. Typically, such assessments depend on highly trained professionals administering expensive, proprietary and time consuming tools. This high resource demand poses a challenge in low and middle income countries (LMICs) where skilled personnel are scarce and public awareness of neurodevelopmental symptoms is low. The resulting delay or outright absence of identification of children vulnerable to developmental problems (i.e. 'detection gap') effectively obstructs community-based interventions that have been shown to improve outcomes. Closing this detection gap will depend on task-shifting from scarce experts to more plentiful non-specialist community health workers, via scalable neurodevelopmental assessment tools.

The proposed research programme will develop a scalable platform for neurodevelopmental assessment in 0-6 year olds (STREAM) by consolidating work from four current projects by the project team on child mental health in LMIC settings. This open-source platform, running on Android tablet PCs, will be administered on 4000 children in India and Malawi by non-specialist workers. It will comprise a diverse set of assessments of child behaviour, parent-report, and parent-child interaction, and use technological innovations in computer vision and machine learning. Known prenatal and perinatal risk factors will be mapped to the measures generated by STREAM to test the sensitivity of the platform. A random subset of the sample in both countries will be clinically evaluated, to test the utility of the platform in identifying clinical needs and diagnoses.

The project objectives will be achieved by an interdisciplinary team of neuroscientists, public health researchers, clinicians, computer scientists, and app developers from UK, India, and Malawi.

Planned Impact

Good mental health in childhood contributes significantly to positive outcomes in later life, improving school readiness and adult productivity. Yet interventions are only effective if impairments are detected in a timely manner. Between 10-20% of children worldwide have mental health problems, and the burden in low and middle income countries (LMICs) far outweighs that in higher income countries. Recent studies estimate that over 250 million children in LMICs are at risk of not reaching their full development potential, with 60 million of these children in India alone. The vast majority (nearly 100%) of child mental health problems are currently undetected and untreated in most LMICs due to a) the paucity of mental health professionals, b) their concentration in urban private healthcare facilities, c) the use of expensive proprietary time-consuming tools for diagnosis, and d) the lack of awareness of neuropsychiatric symptoms and consequent failures to seek treatment.

The proposed platform aims to harness the potential of mobile technology to allow for the provision of mental health assessment at scale, be administered by non-specialist healthcare workers, and across diverse cultural settings. We have identified the following beneficiaries:

1. Families of young children in India and Malawi
Our primary and immediate beneficiaries will be the families of 4000 young children who will be assessed by the STREAM platform. Children identified to have clinical needs will be referred to early interventions through existing referral systems. All parents will benefit by becoming more aware of the signs of atypical development. This increased awareness is expected not only to improve early treatment seeking behaviour, but over time, can lead to reduced stigma associated with these disorders in families and communities. In the longer term, this increased awareness can potentially result in benefits to health, wellbeing and productivity.

2. Community-based healthcare providers
The project will take the first steps to building capacity in the form of local expertise, through training cadres of community health workers. These community health workers form the pillars of the healthcare system in LMICs and this training will strengthen these pillars through building awareness and skill in child development and mental health.

3. State healthcare managers and policymakers
The project will identify the presence of neurodevelopmental disorders as well as clinical needs through testing a large group of children in India and Malawi using the STREAM platform. This information will then be passed on to state healthcare managers to facilitate the delivery of interventions to the children identified with a clinical need. At the end of the project, policymakers will be briefed with the evidence generated on the efficacy of the platform in tracking mental health through the early years of life.

4. International policymakers and advisors
Results of the study will inform international policymakers on the feasibility, acceptability, and utility of a platform for early assessment of mental health in low-resource settings.
Perhaps most significantly for the long term, the implementation of such a non-specialist mediated mental health monitoring approach using mHealth technology will be codified into public policy via links with government organisations and advisory bodies such as the WHO.

Publications

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Hedger N (2021) To covet what we see: Autistic traits modulate the relationship between looking and choosing. in Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research

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Williams EH (2024) The integration of head and body cues during the perception of social interactions. in Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006)

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Hedger N (2020) Social orienting and social seeking behaviors in ASD. A meta analytic investigation. in Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews

 
Description Increased research capability has been generated in both field teams in India and Malawi, and lateral transfer of knowledge between all partners has resulted in a greater upskilling of the entire research team. Since data collection is still ongoing, we do not yet have any key findings from the project.
Exploitation Route NA
Sectors Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software)

Healthcare

 
Description India Autism Center
Geographic Reach Asia 
Policy Influence Type Participation in a guidance/advisory committee
URL http://www.indiaautismcenter.org
 
Description MRC COMPASS award 
Organisation University of Manchester
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution The MRC funded COMPASS project (Communication-centered Parent-mediated treatment for Autism Spectrum Disorder in South Asia) is the largest clinical trials of a parent mediated autism intervention in India. Our app (START) is now very close to being considered as a key outcome measure in this trial, which is about to commence later in 2019. We will provide the app and relevant training to the COMPASS team, as well as help in analysing the data that would be collected from this project. This project will be of direct benefit to India, as it takes place in and around Delhi - involving training of a significant number of community health workers and early career researchers.
Collaborator Contribution The COMPASS team, led by Prof Jonathan Green (University of Manchester) has developed the parent mediated intervention, which is being tested through the RCT.
Impact no output yet.
Start Year 2018
 
Description 2 Posters provided at the Kamuzu University of Health Sciences Research Dissemination Conference on STREAM activities 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact We presented two posters on the STREAM activities. One included a poster on the validation of the Griffiths Tool for measuring child development in Malawi with some preliminary data and information on the challenges identified. The other included a poster on the usability and feedback so far on the use of the STREAM app for measuring neurodevelopment in our families which we are recruiting in Malawi (Limbe and Ndirande)
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://www.kuhes.ac.mw/covid-19-defeated-who-declares-the-world-covid/
 
Description Feedback to the District Health Officer (Blantyre) as well as to health care workers in the Blantyre region 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact We have fed back our present recruitment and work that we are doing in STREAM to the District Health Officer in Blantyre as well as chief nursing and health officers to ensure that they are aware of our activities and keen to continue to engage with us on this work.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Interview by BBC Berkshire 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Media (as a channel to the public)
Results and Impact I was interviewed about our work in developing apps for assessing autism in low-resource settings. This interview raised the profile of our work regionally, and increased visibility. We have had more requests from local individuals to take part in our research.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
 
Description Interview by Forbes Health 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact BC was interviewed by Forbes Health about empathy, and conditions in which different fractions of empathy might be affected. This article was published in Forbes Health in August 2023.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://www.forbes.com/health/mind/empathy/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CLearning%20plays%20a%20major%20role,pra...
 
Description Invited editorial for the Indian Journal of Medical Research 
Form Of Engagement Activity A magazine, newsletter or online publication
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact I wrote an invited editorial for the Indian Journal of Medical Research (the oldest medical journal of India) - on the need for a national programme for autism. This journal is read widely within the Indian medical establishment.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://journals.lww.com/ijmr/fulltext/2023/04000/autism_in_india__time_for_a_national_programme.1.a...
 
Description Invited editorial in The Hindu (the second largest circulated English newspaper in India) 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Media (as a channel to the public)
Results and Impact BC wrote an invited editorial for The Hindu on Autism on the occasion of World Autism Awareness Day in April 2023.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/india-needs-a-national-programme-on-autism/article66692307.ece
 
Description Invited lecture at Department of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Nearly fifty people attended the virtual seminar, and there was considerable discussion after the lecture on the implications of the research and potential future directions.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://www.ucl.ac.uk/pals/events/2021/nov/language-cognition-seminar-prof-bhismadev-chakrabarti
 
Description Invited lecture at Bar-Ilan University, Israel [BC] 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Around 30 people attended an advanced seminar on autism and social cognition. This event led to many questions and an interesting discussion afterward.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
 
Description Invited lecture at Mansfield Hall, USA 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Over 50 people attended a seminar I gave to all staff working at Mansfield Hall, an organisation devoted to catalyse transitions of autistic young adults to mainstream universities in the USA. The lecture led to detailed follow-up discussions as well as laid the foundation for an institutional partnership between Mansfield Hall and University of Reading. This partnership, once it has been legally approved, will allow autistic students from Mansfield Hall to come and spend a term abroad at the University of Reading.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://mansfieldhall.org
 
Description Invited lecture at University of Cambridge (Zangwill Club, Department of Experimental Psychology) [BC] 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Around 50 people attended an online seminar on autism and empathy. The seminar was part of the flagship series of departmental seminars held at the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge (Zangwill Club).
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL http://talks.cam.ac.uk/talk/index/156637
 
Description Invited lecture at University of Florida, USA [BC] 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Abuot 20 researchers attended an advanced online seminar on Autism and social cognition. The seminar was followed by interesting questions and discussion.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
 
Description Keynote address at an IBRO conference on Neurodevelopmental Disorders at Jindal University, India 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact I delivered a keynote address describing our work on this and other projects, which gave rise to many follow-up questions and requests for collaboration/partnership.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
 
Description Keynote lecture at the Dutch national autism congress 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact I gave a keynote lecture, showcasing our research on this and other projects at the Dutch Autism National Congress. This is the largest autism related event held annually in the Netherlands, attended by multiple stakeholders. The lecture gave rise to substantial discussion afterward.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
 
Description Keynote lecture at the annual meeting of the Indian Psychiatric Society 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact This is the main annual conference for all psychiatrists in India, attended by a large number of practitioners. I presented the data from the STREAM and START projects. At the end of the lecture, I received many questions, and requests for collaboration - as well as invitations for future lectures.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
 
Description Oral presentation 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Oral Presentation by Teresa del Bianco: "Socioeconomic Status, Mental Health and Cognitive Outcomes in Autism: The Effect of Family Composition and Income across Three Multi-Country Studies", Topic Area: International and Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Session Title: Community-Based Care Around the World
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Panel chair at BPS Cognitive Developmental Section Conference at Stoke-on-Trent 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact I chaired a symposium on "Mobile health (mHealth) technologies to address assessment and intervention gaps in autism in low-resource settings" at the British Psychological Society Annual Meeting of the Cognitive and Developmental Sections at Stoke-on-Trent
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Plenary lecture at an international conference on 'Redefining well-being in the wake of the pandemic' at University of Calcutta, India 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact This three day international webinar attracted a large audience from all over India. My lecture led to a published book of conference proceedings and several follow-up conversations and connections.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
 
Description Plenary talk on annual meeting of Bangladesh International Medical Students Scientific Congress (largest medical conference in Bangladesh) [BC] 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Over 2000 people attended the online webinar on "Moving the lab to the field: Perspectives from Autism research".
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
 
Description Poster presentation 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Neurodiversity of the AIMS-2-Trials Research Network: Clinical and Self Diagnosis, Disclosure and Personal Links to Autism
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Poster presentation 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Poster Presentation by Teresa del Bianco: "Unlocking Social Brain Function in Autism: Variation By Sex and Neurotype of Microdynamics of Face Processing" Session Title: Brain Function (fMRI, fcMRI, MRS, EEG, ERP, MEG) at INSAR, Stockholm, Sweden May 2023
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Poster presentation at the INSAR Annual Meeting 2023 in Stockholm 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact Poster presentation at the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR) Annual Meeting 2023 in Stockholm. This in-person poster presentation and tech demo of the STREAM app provided an overview of the app/study, which sparked positive discussions around the aims, approaches, and potential impact of the work. Many researchers and healthcare professionals expressed a keen interest in the app/study and a desire to be able to use the STREAM app in their future work.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Talk at Harvard University 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Invited talk at Dr Dana McCoy's SEED Lab, Harvard Graduate School of Education. The online presentation provided an overview of the STREAM study, which sparked positive discussion around the aims, approaches, and potential impact of the work.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Talk at the International Developmental Paediatrics Congress in Johannesburgh 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact Our team provided two poster presentations at the International Developmental Paediatrics Congress
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://idpacongress2023.co.za/#:~:text=We%20welcome%20you%20to%20join,Development%20Association%20o...
 
Description Talk at the Kamuzu University of Health Sciences Research and Dissemination Meeting 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact We presented the present work being conducted by the STREAM team in Malawi in Ndirande and Limbe as a plenary session in the Research Dissemination Conference at Kumuzu University of Health Sciences at Blantyre, Malawi Nov 24 2023
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://www.kuhes.ac.mw/covid-19-defeated-who-declares-the-world-covid/
 
Description Talk at the University of Northampton 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Talk at the Health, Education, and Behaviour Change special interest group at the University of Northampton. The online presentation provided an overview of the STREAM study, which sparked positive discussion around the aims, approaches, and potential impact of the work.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
 
Description UN roundtable meeting on autism on the occassion of World autism awareness month 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Media (as a channel to the public)
Results and Impact I was an invited expert panelist on the UN roundtable meeting on autism, held to celebrate the world autism awareness month. The meeting was held virtually, and live telecast by the UN Television. It gave rise to questions and discussions later.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
 
Description UNICEF roundtable on AI/ML applications for early identification of neurodevelopmental disorders 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact This virtual roundtable meeting was organised by UNICEF and chaired by the Chief Science Officer of Autism speaks, the largest autism charity worldwide. I was invited as an expert to speak about our work in using these techniques in the scalable apps that we have been working on. The roundtable generated wider awareness of our work and the challenges - and highlighted the future potential for this work to be integrated into worldwide healthcare pathways.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
 
Description Young Academy of Europe 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact About 40 people attended an online seminar on our research that I delivered as part of the tenth anniversary lecture series organised by the Young Academy of Europe. The lecture prompted follow up questions and discussions.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYWWHFwB9kQ