London: Researchers from India and the UK are collaborating on a new 5.3 million pounds project to adapt and scale up an artificial intelligence (AI) enabled digital mental health programme for adolescent girls living in Indian villages.
The international project, unveiled to coincide with the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi this week, involves partners from Imperial College London, University of Cambridge, Tata Institute of Social Sciences and Milaan Foundation, alongside community-based organisations.
The team will work to develop and test the use of an AI chatbot for girls with low mood and anxiety in low-resource settings of rural India.
This project sits at the intersection of AI, data science, digital health and global mental health equity, said Professor Ceire Costelloe, Imperial College project lead as Chair in Health Informatics at the university’s School of Public Health.
Our role at Imperial is to ensure that AI-enabled interventions are properly evaluated using real-world data, and implemented in ways that are ethical, transparent and responsive to local context. This is essential if digital mental health tools are to deliver meaningful impact at the scale needed, she said.
Funded by Wellcome, the research will support a scale-up study to culturally adapt and contextualise a clinically-validated AI tool which will be delivered through the digital mental health platform Wysa, which provides chatbots for self-help and directs users to appropriate healthcare resources.
The aim will be to establish if the tool can help address anxiety and low mood among adolescent girls, a section of the world’s population known to experience some of the most pronounced mental health inequalities.
The tool will be made available to girls who face significant barriers to mental health support, including limited autonomy, restricted access to technology, lower literacy, stigma and family gatekeeping.
We already see through Wysa’s ‘phygital AI’ DreamKit implementation how the right support can help a girl build skills and emotional resilience in her daily life. Now we want to go further; developing a clinically tested, culturally grounded programme that’s there for her not just in prevention, but in the moments when she’s truly struggling, said Jo Aggarwal, CEO at Wysa.
Wysa is designed as a global digital mental health platform that combines AI and human support, working with healthcare providers, including the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) and public health programmes in India.
According to official data, India is home to more than 253 million children and young people aged between 10 and 19, making it the largest adolescent population in the world.
Around half of all mental health conditions begin before the age of 14, and suicide is among the leading causes of death among young people. Girls are particularly vulnerable, experiencing higher rates of anxiety and depression alongside social, cultural and technological barriers to care.
The new international study will begin by mapping the cultural, social, technological and practical barriers that shape adolescent girls’ access to digital mental health support in rural India.
These insights will be used to adapt Wysa’s AI-enabled content and delivery model, ensuring it reflects the lived realities of girls, their families and their communities. The adapted intervention will then be evaluated for its effectiveness, acceptability and feasibility in real-world low-to-middle-income settings.
This funding allows us to go far beyond simple translation. By working closely with academic and community partners, we aim to co-design a digital intervention that is not only clinically effective, but genuinely usable and relevant for adolescent girls living in rural India, said Chaitali Sinha, Principal Investigator on the study, as the Chief Clinical and Research & Development Officer at Wysa.
Digital mental health interventions are typically app-based programmes that provide guided tools to help users manage anxiety and low mood. These can include the use of AI chatbots, where users can ask questions about their health and speak to AI-powered large language models in a secure environment.
When rigorously evaluated, these interventions have the potential to extend access to evidence-based mental health support in settings where traditional services are limited or difficult to reach.
We are delighted to support Wysa in their work to adapt and scale up this evidence-based digital intervention to address anxiety and depression in adolescent girls across rural India, said Miranda Wolpert, Director of Mental Health at Wellcome.
This funding was awarded as part of our call to find the best ways to develop and scale digital innovations for early intervention, she said.
Imperial College London said its team will provide scientific leadership for the AI, data and digital health research, overseeing the study’s design, evaluation framework and its implementation, and ensuring the intervention is clinically effective, ethically sound and informed by real-world data, while being designed for delivery at scale in low-resource settings.
Amanda Wolthuizen, Vice-President, Communications and Strategic Engagement at Imperial College London, added This project exemplifies our ambition with Imperial Global India to strengthen and expand our academic, industrial and innovation partnerships between the UK and India.
Through international collaboration with our global partners, we can use science for humanity to improve the health of millions of people around the world.
