Digital Health
Platform Leadership
Lena Quilty, PhD
André Comiran Tonon, MD, PhD
Platform Operations
The Digital Health Platform operates at the following research sites:
- Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (Toronto, Ontario)
- McMaster University (Hamilton, Ontario)
Platform Overview
Recent advances in wearable user interfaces, alongside the widespread adoption of mobile devices, have created a strong demand for innovative digital health solutions. In particular, there is growing interest in dynamic, real-time assessments of individuals’ moods, behaviours, and activities over time. These approaches help reduce recall bias and overcome limitations inherent in traditional psychiatric assessments.
CAN-BIND’s Digital Health Platform focuses on measurement-based care, wellness promotion, ongoing monitoring, and relapse prevention. The platform is dedicated to developing tools, strategies, and technologies that improve patient outcomes, research quality, and economic impact in the field of depression, while advancing the potential of digital health in psychiatric research. This includes behavioural sensing, ecological momentary assessment (EMA; “real-time” data collection), and the use of digital tools to enhance participant engagement.
The Digital Health Platform also functions as an enabling infrastructure for CAN-BIND researchers. It helps investigators identify opportunities to integrate digital health technologies into current and future studies, provides technical support and guidance for implementing and standardizing these components within research protocols, and supports both quality assurance and integrative data analysis. In addition, the platform helps facilitate partnerships with digital health companies and collaborators within and beyond CAN-BIND.