Dr. Nicholas Cummins of Augsburg University, Germany, was Invited by the Mental Health Department to Give an Academic Lecture

On the morning of June 18, Dr. Nicholas Cummins of Augsburg University and Dr. Lu Xiaoyong of the School Of Computer Science And Engineering Of Northwest Normal University were invited to our hospital for academic lectures. Zhang Lan, director of mental health department, and more than 30 medical staff attended the lecture.

Prof. Zhang Lan pointed out the necessity of cooperation and exchange of cross majors, and multi-angle can help the clinical medical staff to have a deeper understanding of depression. With the computer technology and wearable tools as the means of auxiliary diagnosis of depression, people will have higher recognition rate of depression, which is advantageous to treat patients timely, thus improve the mental health of the whole people.

Dr. Nicholas Cummins presented in details the frontier knowledge and development of machine learning technology to detect and diagnose depression. He said with computer technology, any abnormal pronunciation, intonation, words numbers, face expression and pronunciation myodynamia can be the auxiliary diagnosis of depression, and improved the diagnostic reliability with the application of multimodality. Dr. Lu Xiaoyong said that using multi-sensor signal analysis, emotional calculation and computer hearing could be the auxiliary diagnosis and detection methods for mental diseases such as depression, and to further evaluate the mental health status of individuals. The two doctors also answered questions that the audience raised.

Dr. Dong Qiangli of the mental health department of our hospital introduced the clinical and scientific research development, patients receiving and treatment methods in detail, and guided Dr. Nicholas Cummins to visit the mental health ward. During the visit, Dr. Nicholas Cummins praised the hospital's "patient-centered" services.

The lectures opens up staff’s horizon; sets up a platform for further international communication and cooperation; and inspires the doctors’ and graduates’ scientific research ideas and research directions, which has guiding significance for the multidisciplinary cross and fusion research, and promotes the construction and development of mental health department.