On 26th February 2020 at Sci-Tech Daresbury (Vanguard House, Floor 2, boardroom), ORCHA and the University of Nottingham will be running a workshop with commissioners of mental health services.

Well-designed algorithmic systems have great potential to improve mental healthcare, however, there is a lack of use cases in this area to understand the ethical, social and political challenges and uncertainties to be addressed. To disentangle risks from opportunities, ORCHA are supporting Dr Elvira Perez Vallejos, Associate Professor of Digital Technology and Mental Health, Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences, University of Nottingham.

For the proposed project, we will use the UnBias Toolkit, which has been designed not just for critical thinking but for civic thinking, supporting a more collective approach to imagining the future. This project will feed into NIHR MindTech and Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre. Our goals are (1) to provide a multidisciplinary perspective, involving a representative and inclusive group of stakeholders to discuss issues of trust in algorithmic mediated systems and the organisations that create them, and (2) generate more use cases to reflect on current and potential applications uses of algorithms and artificial intelligence in mental healthcare.

The next step in the project is to run a series of workshops with Commissioners of Mental Health Services. The next workshop is scheduled for 10am to 2pm (with 1hr lunch provided) on the 26th February. If you are interested and are able to participate or would like to know more about how you can get involved, please sign-up via this page or get in touch with Paul Davies, ORCHA Associate, at paul.davies@orcha.co.uk