Collaborative clinical, technical and user-interface research to accelerate translation of an online visual test to diagnose bipolar disorder

This project will develop an online visual test to diagnose bipolar disorder (BD). BD, schizophrenia (SCZ) and major depressive disorder (MDD) are commonly misdiagnosed with enormous personal, social and economic costs. Principal investigator (PI) is a leading binocular rivalry (BR) researcher, having shown this visual test could reduce such misdiagnosis and identify those at-risk of BD (thus aiding finding genes for BD). To fully examine the BR test requires very large sample sizes (1000s to 10000s), so an online test platform is required. An online BR test prototype has been developed via successful health and research (MAPrc) and Monash Faculty of Information Technology (FIT) partnership, with seed funding from Monash Institute of Medical Engineering (MIME) and Defence Health Foundation (DHF). We propose to accelerate (i) test development with full front- and back-end capability, (ii) user-interface testing, and (iii) roll out of the test in 5000 healthy subjects (Australia) and 5000 BD subjects (UK). By 12 months the online BR test platform will be quality assured and rollout data submitted to international journals. 'Binocular Rivalry Online' will be based in Victoria and yield ongoing collaborations between Victoria and international psychiatric research consortia. The project will integrate research and healthcare, advance industry-research engagement and innovation, and lead to securing development and commercialisation opportunities.