Conversational Interfaces Supporting Mental Health and Wellbeing of People in Sparsely Populated Areas

Programme 2014 - 2020 INTERREG VB Northern Periphery and Arctic

Date of latest update: 2023-11-16

Description

Description (EN):

The mental health and emotional wellbeing of citizens in the NPA region is a growing concern. There is a lack of investment in services to help prevent mental health problems, to manage symptoms and provide treatments for those with mental health issues. One-to-one therapy is expensive, there are only a limited number of qualified therapists, who are also time and resource limited, and one to one therapy requires scheduling and often, travel, for clients. Accessibility of these treatments is a particular problem for people living with mental health issues in rural areas, and by the fact that mental illness remains stigmatized and some people may feel embarrassed to engage with a therapist. VoicePal will increase access to therapy using an automated, computer-based ‘virtual’ therapy service utilizing chatbot and voicebot technologies. A virtual therapist is always available, and allows the user to receive therapy through voice or text based conversation with an artificially intelligent agent. This means that such technology is natural, usable and intuitive since it simulates everyday human-to-human conversation allowing the technology to be adopted by non-digital natives. VoicePal will enable more people to easily and quickly access therapy at the point of need and alongside, or as part of, one-to-one treatment with a human therapist. There is also reason to hypothesise that users will open up sooner to a virtual therapist in comparison to a human therapist due to the degree of anonymity and lack of being negatively judged by a fellow human or peer. Mental health is experienced by everyone, and mental illness is not limited to any particular age group or section of the population. This study will therefore trial a virtual therapist to assist young and old citizens and for people who may have been unable to access one to one therapy because of financial limitations, making it a unique cross-generational study with benefits across society.

Website: http://www.interreg-npa.eu/

Thematic information

Health and social services

Specific Objective: Increased innovation within public service provision in remote, sparsely populated areas

Thematic Objective: (01) strengthening research, technological development and innovation by:

Investment Priority:

(01b) promoting business investment in R&I, developing links and synergies between enterprises, research and development centres and the higher education sector, in particular promoting investment in product and service development, technology transfer, social innovation, eco-innovation, public service applications, demand stimulation, networking, clusters and open innovation through smart specialisation, and supporting technological and applied research, pilot lines, early product validation actions, advanced manufacturing capabilities and first production, in particular in key enabling technologies and diffusion of general purpose technologies

Partners (3)

Lead Partner: University of Ulster

Department: Department of Global Bus. & Enterprise, School of Computing, and School of Psychology

Address: Cromore Road, BT52 1SA Coleraine, United Kingdom

Legal status: public

Website: http://www.ulster.ac.uk

Total budget: EUR 23 163.06

ERDF budget: EUR 15 055.99

Itä-Suomen yliopisto

Name: Itä-Suomen yliopisto

Department: Department of Nursing Science

Address: P. O. Box 1627, 70211 Kuopio, Finland

Legal status: public

Website: http://www.uef.fi

Total budget: EUR 11 916.30

ERDF budget: EUR 7 745.60

Norrbottens Kommuner

Name: Norrbottens Kommuner

Address: Kungsgatan 23, 971 28 Luleå, Sweden

Legal status: public

Website: http://www.norrbottenskommuner.se

Total budget: EUR 9 920.64

ERDF budget: EUR 6 448.42

Partners map

Lead partner

Project partner

Summary

Project name (EN): Conversational Interfaces Supporting Mental Health and Wellbeing of People in Sparsely Populated Areas

Project acronym: VoicePal

Project start date: 2018-09-01

Project end date: 2018-11-30

Project status: closed

Total budget/expenditure: EUR 45 000.00

Total EU funding (amount): EUR 29 250.00

Total EU funding (co-financing rate): 65.00%

Co-financing sources:

ERDF: Amount, EUR 29 250.00.

Information regarding the data in keep.eu on the programme financing this project

Financing programme

2014 - 2020 INTERREG VB Northern Periphery and Arctic

Last month that data in keep.eu was retrieved from the Programme's website or received from the Programme

2023-11-02

No. of projects in keep.eu / Total no. of projects (% of projects in keep.eu)

152 / 152 (100%)

No. of project partnerships in keep.eu / Total no. of project partnerships (% of project partnerships in keep.eu)

779 / 779 (100%)

Notes on the data

Information provided by the Programme.

The financial data featured in keep.eu for this programme, it's projects and its partners is not exact and should be taken as a reference only.

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Conversational Interfaces Supporting Mental Health and Wellbeing of People in Sparsely Populated Areas

Description

Thematic information

Partners (3)

Partners map

Summary

Information regarding the data in keep.eu on the programme financing this project

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