Project description
Depression treatment goes digital
Some 300 million people suffer from depression worldwide. It is one of the most common mental health disorders, presenting with depressed mood, loss of interest, decreased energy, feelings of guilt or low self-esteem, disturbed sleep and poor concentration. In most cases, it is left untreated, which will become even more problematic as an increase in cases is expected due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The EU-funded SOOMA project will create a digital platform for the treatment of depression. Based on the pioneering Finnish medical technology of a non-invasive, non-drug brain stimulation tool, it will develop a solution for clinics, allowing them to provide relief in a period of two to four weeks for numerous patients. The project is working on making the solution safe to be used at home, revolutionising the field of depression therapy.
Objective
Depression is the single leading cause of disability: over 300 million people suffer from depression worldwide. This number will increase sharply following the coronavirus outbreak. Psychiatry units are overloaded in most countries already now, which is why about 75% of the people who seek help do not receive adequate treatment. It is not enough to simply scale up existing services – psychiatrists need fundamentally new approaches that help them treat more patients more effectively, without needing more resources.
Sooma Oy is a pioneering Finnish medical technology SME with a mission to bring relief to the millions of people who suffer from depression. We have developed a non-invasive brain stimulation tool that has proven highly effective and safe for treating severe depression: it offers relief for most patients in just 2-4 weeks. The treatment protocol consists of 10-20 daily 30-minute brain stimulation sessions, out of which the first is performed at a doctor’s office and patients can carry out the rest at home. Sooma is therefore the ideal tool for clinics to help more patients: home based treatment will address the main bottleneck of psychiatric care by reducing the required hospital resources by up to 90%.
At the moment our therapy should only be used under professional supervision. To unlock its true impact, we will build Sooma Online digital therapy platform that enables the use of Sooma at home. The platform will provide intelligent features allowing medical professionals to tailor the treatment to the individual, remotely monitor their progress, and adjust as needed. This platform will be a major breakthrough for the entire field of depression therapy.
This is a high-risk complex development, and the EU funding is key for de-risking the move from early adopters to the mass market. Our goal is to disrupt the global €14 billion antidepressants market, and more importantly, to help the world to get back in order in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- medical and health sciences clinical medicine psychiatry
- medical and health sciences health sciences public health epidemiology pandemics
- medical and health sciences health sciences infectious diseases RNA viruses coronaviruses
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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H2020-EU.2.3. - INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs
MAIN PROGRAMME
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H2020-EU.3. - PRIORITY 'Societal challenges
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H2020-EU.2.1. - INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) H2020-EIC-SMEInst-2018-2020
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
00370 Helsinki
Finland
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.