Health Sciences: Where Is Research Needed in the Future?

How winnovation Helped Find Areas for Research in Mental Health by Lead User & Lead Expert Search

winnovation helped the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft find under-studied areas for research in mental health by connecting them with Lead Users and Lead Experts

Challenge

Citizens expect science to contribute towards solving societal problems. But how does science know what to focus on?

The Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft is an independent Austrian research incubator with roughly 600 employees that mainly work in health science. Since one in five citizens will be impacted by mental illness during their lifetime, the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft wanted capture detailed input for under-researched areas of mental health.

Together with the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft, winnovation developed a tailor-made problem-crowdsourcing process.

Approach

The core issues was precisely defined and tested (which should be made available to the public). Sub-questions that appealed directly to the target group – patients, family members, nurses, doctors and therapists. Winnovation designed the entire crowdsourcing process and accompanied its technical implementation, including analysis and evaluation of submissions. This helped to identify problem areas that had not previously been in the spotlight of research.

The Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft was surprised to receive almost 400 high-quality contributions from affected people, family members and experts, despite the fact that mental illness is still partly a taboo topic. The contributions provided an important indication of the starting points for research.

All contributions were analysed by winnovation and technical specialists for mental illness, and the most important key “problem areas“ were then identified and categorized.

Result

These will be evaluated through a combination of crowd voting and expert jury assessment, and presented at the end of 2015 to the population and the scientific community. The aim is to initiate new research projects based on the new and highly relevant questions sourced from society for society.