John Curtin’s laboratory focuses on the development and implementation of digital therapeutics, which are software programs or “apps” that prevent, manage, or treat disease including substance use disorders and other mental illness. Digital therapeutics can provide empirically-supported interventions, illness and treatment management tools, and services to enhance peer support and communications with care providers.
We primarily focus on algorithm development for temporally precise psychiatric risk prediction (e.g., moment by moment relapse risk prediction; efficient and early psychiatric screening) and “just-in-time” personalized interventions that adapt to both characteristics of the patient and their moment in time. To this end, we combine analytic approaches from machine learning with novel, highly informative signals (e.g., geolocation; cellular communications; social media activity; physiology via wearable biosensors) derived by passive personal sensing.
Our research program is highly interdisciplinary, with collaborators within the Center for Health Enhancement Systems Studies, computer science, geography, and electrical and computer engineering. Our research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIAAA, NIDA, NCI and NIMH) since 1998.
For more information on…
- Our lab’s approach to digital therapeutics, see John’s recent TEDx talk.
- Our current funding, see our grants in relapse risk prediction in opioid use disorder, and relapse risk prediction in alcohol use disorder, and precision mental health for smoking cessation
- Our current research project, see our recent protocol paper on relapse prediction in opioid use disorder.
- Click here for graduate student admissions for 2025