Predicting depression in older adults - THAW PhD student has paper published in high impact journal

THAW PhD student Jake Andrews and supervisor Professor Rob Harrison have published a paper in the Journal of Affective Disorders.

The paper describes how they used a machine learning approach to build an algorithm that predicts the onset of depression in older people.

The study looked at daily mood scores given by older adults using a touchscreen interface known as NANA – Novel Assessment of Nutrition and Ageing. The model predicted whether or not the Geriatric Depression Scale would assess participants as depressed 10 weeks after they reported their mood using NANA.

Although this is exciting work, it uses data from only 40 older people, so more research is needed before the algorithm can be put to use. The full paper can be read here.

For more information about the research of THAW or this paper, please contact Jake Andrews.

CATCH project joins Sheffield startups and entrepreneurs to come together to drive innovation

CATCH project NANA joined entrepreneurs and startups in revealing new solutions which will re-energise Sheffield and help its residents live independently at an event on Thursday 29th September.

The ’Demo Day’, which which took place at Sheffield Hallam University, showcased innovative ideas that have been developed in the city over the past year as part of the Sheffield Smart Lab programme.

The Sheffield Smart Lab initiative, a partnership between Sheffield City Council, Amey and the Ferrovial Services Centre of Excellence for Cities, invited entrepreneurs and startup businesses to submit ideas that would help to address the two different challenges.

Over 50 ideas were received from entrepreneurs and startup businesses around the world, which were narrowed down to just nine winning solutions.  NANA, a system that monitors the nutritional intake and cognitive function of older adults, was one of the nine winning solutions.

The winning entrepreneurs and startups were awarded with an incubation and acceleration programme, sponsored by the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University, and the opportunity to develop their solutions in the city.

They presented their developed solutions at the Demo Day event, showing how their solutions can benefit Sheffield’s residents and visitors.

Simon Butler, Centre Manager for CATCH, who, alongside PhD student Jake Andrews, presented NANA at the event said “it is a fantastic endorsement of the potential of NANA that it was selected as one of the nine winners of the Sheffield Smart Lab. Winning this competition has allowed us to start working on a trial of the system in Sheffield City Council and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals Trust services that offer short term care and rehabilitation to older people who have experienced a period of ill health or have been in hospital.”

Cllr Leigh Bramall, deputy leader and cabinet member for business for Sheffield City Council, said: “As a council, it is important to us that we drive innovation in Sheffield. There’s an energy and appetite for it in the city and we recognise that in order to do this we need to partner with startups and innovators.

“That’s what Sheffield Smart Lab is all about and by supporting entrepreneurs and helping them to build on their ideas and making them a reality; we have benefited both them and the city.

“The challenges that the solutions solve are hugely important to Sheffield and this has given us a great opportunity to offer a better quality of life for the people of Sheffield and attract visitors to the city centre.“

Validation of the NANA (Novel Assessment of Nutrition and Ageing) touch screen system for use at home by older adults.

Professor Arlene Astell and colleagues have recently published a paper about NANA: a touchscreen system developed in partnership with older adults for them to collect daily information about what they are eating and drinking, their physical activity, mood and cognitive function to support them to live well at home.

Reference: Astell, A. J., Hwang, F., Brown, L.J.E., Timon, C., Maclean, L.M., Smith, T., Adlam, T., Khadra, H., and Williams, E.A. (2014). Experimental Gerontology, 60 (100-107).    

First quarter after publication: 759 views or downloads

The article is open access and available here. 

Healthy Ageing Workshop and Exhibition held today

RAT group members Professors Gail Mountain and Arlene Astell are talking today at a Knowledge Transfer workshop "Healthy Ageing and Older People" at the Council House in Birmingham. The event is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and brings together projects  from both the New Dynamics of Ageing Programme (NDA) and Life Long Health and Wellbeing Programme (LLHW). The workshop is aimed at practitioners, health and social care professionals, policy makers, older people and anyone who has an interest in improving outcomes for people in later life. The main aims of the event are to disseminate new research findings and translate these findings into accessible messages, engage with a wide range of people on these topics and identify gaps in knowledge for any future research.

Gail will be talking about the Lifestyle Matters project, a randomised controlled trial to determine the benefit of an occupational therapy based programme for people aged 65 years and older. Arlene will be talking about the Novel Assessment of Nutrition in Ageing (NANA) project, which uses sensitively-designed technology to improve data collection and integrate information on nutrition, physical function, cognitive function and mental health which is used to help identify people who are at risk of under-nourishment to allow improved targeting of interventions.