A Scottish university has secured £250,000 funding to work with a software company on a ‘pioneering’ artificial intelligence (AI) platform for mental health and wellbeing.
The University of the West of Scotland (UWS) is to embark on a project with Frog Systems thanks to a grant from the government-backed UK Research & Innovation.
The project will involve AI and advanced data science techniques to accelerate the development of the company’s platform.
Announced during Mental Health Awareness Week, the 30-month project is part of a knowledge transfer partnership (KTP) funded by UKRI through Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency.
The KTP will link Frog Systems with a recently qualified computing graduate who will be based at the company and ongoing academic support from a team of academics at UWS, led by Professors Naeem Ramzan and Zeeshan Pervez from the school of computing, engineering and physical sciences.
Phil Worms, CEO of Frog Systems, said: “Demand for the mental health and wellbeing support our platform offers is increasing and this partnership will bring new knowledge and skills to our business to position us for rapid scale-up. The ability to embed AI and machine learning will make the platform more responsive for users and give our clients even greater insight into how they can allocate resources to provide support.”
Frog Systems’ unique online platform showcases videos of people sharing their life experiences to direct users to support services. Over the next two and a half years, UWS will help Frog Systems develop its content streaming capabilities through an intelligent recommendations engine and dynamic video content delivery process. Currently users are matched to resources by key words they physically type in.