The Centre for Digital Health Interventions (CDHI) is a joint initiative of the Department of Management, Technology and Economics at ETH Zurich, the Future Health Technologies Programme at the Singapore-ETH Centre, and the Institute of Technology Management at the University of St. Gallen.
Our interdisciplinary team of computer and social scientists partners with medical experts to design behavioural, scalable and self-improving digital health interventions (“digital pills”) that are effective and cost-efficient. We conduct digital biomarker and chatbot research and use wearable sensors, mobile applications, social media and other technologies for the prevention and management of chronic and mental illness.
Our digital biomarker research explores novel applications at the intersection of medicine, artificial intelligence, and ubiquitous computing. Our chatbot research explores how conversational agents and voice assistants must be designed to improve adherence to health interventions and thus, to support health-promoting behaviour.
We also initiated and participate in the on-going development of the award-winning open-source platform MobileCoach for digital health interventions and ecological momentary assessments.
Our work is published in scientific outlets and as open-source software. Consistent with the Swiss Open Research Data initiative and provided there are no legal, ethical or copyright barriers, data from our (clinical) trials is published in open scientific databases for replication purposes and to allow the application of novel data analytical approaches by academia and industry in the future.
LATEST NEWS
Adapting a breathing training app to include a gameful biofeedback component
Video Abstract In this research paper titled "Physiological Responses and User Feedback on a Gameful Breathing Training App: Within-Subject Experiment" and published in JMIR, [...]
Lessons learned using Facebook advertising during COVID-19
Workshop Presentation by Joseph Ollier The use of social media platforms for the purpose of recruitment is becoming more popular in digital health [...]
How do top-funded companies use conversational agents for the treatment of Depression?
Workshop Presentation by Aishah Alattas In this workshop paper titled "To What Scale Are Conversational Agents Used by Top-funded Companies Offering Digital Mental [...]
LATEST PROJECTS
MobileCoach Open Source Platform
The vision of the MobileCoach platform is to create fully-automated digital interventions. Due to a modular and extendable structure as well as an architecture rooted [...]
Prediction and Prevention of Non-Adherence to Digital Health Interventions
Digital Health Interventions show great potential in supporting health care systems with the globally increasing prevalence and economic costs of chronic diseases - the leading causes of [...]
Towards a Digital Biomarker for COPD
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is one of the leading causes of death and affects 251 million people worldwide. In the United States, the direct costs of [...]
