Principal Investigator: Lt Col Muhammad Nazrul Islam, PhD

Title: PPD COACH: Detecting the Postpartum Depression in Bangladesh Women through AI and Visual Questionnaires

Problem Statement:

For amelioration of the mental health of the children’s mother, early screening and secondary prevention for PD could be beneficial. The demand for secondary and tertiary prevention and treatment resources is increasing as more women are becoming identified as having symptoms of PPD. For ensuring these needs, a multidisciplinary approach can be taken involving obstetricians, family physicians, pediatricians, and mental health professionals.

Despite all this research in PPD, there has not been enough technological progression for supporting mothers in developing countries like Bangladesh, where mental health is not prioritized an mothers face social shame frequently. This could be detrimental to the health of both mother and child. This needs the assessment of such a system that can:

• Efficiently detects postpartum depression using visual screening tests.
• Developing a system for end-users through the agile process through comparing results taking the EPDS screening test as a benchmark.
• Evaluating the system developed through effectiveness, efficiency and usability metrics.

Fund: 4,30,000/-

Objectives:

The objectives of this project are:

1. To develop the scenario-based visual representation of EPDS questionnaires adopting the HCI design principles.
2. To develop an application for detecting the PPD in Bangladeshi Women integrating the scenario-based visual representation and AI.
3. To explore the performances between the scenario-based visual questionnaires and text-based questionnaires in detecting the PPD.
4. To evaluate the usability performance of the developed application in terms of effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction.

Expected Outcomes:

The outcome of this research are as follows:

1. A set of scenario-based visual questionnaires to detect the PPD in Bangladeshi women.
2. An AI and HCI based application to detect the PPD in Bangladeshi women.
3. Evaluation results justifying the developed application in terms of its effectiveness and usability.

Duration: 1 year