By Oluwagbemiga Oyinlola, August 29, 2022
The Human service Information Technology association (husITa) is very delighted to announce the winners of the Best Human Services App Award for 2022. The association have designed the award to recognize outstanding software applications that supports the mission of husITa which is promoting the ethical and effective use of information technology to better serve humanity. The award supports an individual, group, or organization to address a human-service problem or personal challenge. Submissions were judged by a panel of husITa Board Members and an outside computer scientist using a set of five criteria including Purpose or creating problem solving, Sustainability of the app such as outside financial support to ensure the app will continue to grow and how the Award will be used, Effectiveness or various key milestones in the app’s development, User Value or the number of potential end-users and number of currentusers and how it might benefit them, and Technical Design.
The judges awarded the Best App Award to John Torous and his team for the development of mindLAMP. This app is a community built digital platform intuitively designed and engineered for clinical insights and research methods in digital medicine built upon its robust data server, protocol, and the automations framework.
The mindLAMP enables patient to take surveys, play cognitive games, access helpful tips and resources, or do meditation and breathing exercises; when enabled and configured, the app collects sensor data from the mobile device’s accelerometer, GPS, pedometer, and more in the background without interrupting the patient. It also collects metadata about the patient’s use of the app, like how long certain questions took to answer in a survey, or which helpful tips they appreciated the most, and uploads the data securely to a server an organization owns. The many robust components of the mindLAMP app is working together to automate workflows and simplify clinic and data management. Today, the mindLAMP platform is indexed in the World Health Organizations Digital Health Atlas, used around the globe by many research groups, and implemented in busy community clinics, including at major Harvard Medical School teaching hospitals.
The winners have also provided a brief video which can be seen below.