Company: Cambridge Adaptive Testing
Location: Cambridge, England
Founded: 2024
Founders: Dr. Jan Stochl and Prof. Peter Brian Jones
Written by: Shubhi Raghav
Edited by: Natasha Barrow & Caroline Babisz
The current global mental health crisis puts half of the world at risk of experiencing a mental health disorder in their lifetime. The onset of mental health issues such as depression and anxiety, can be traced back to adolescence for many adults. In order to diagnose such disorders, the first hurdle is being able to measure mental distress precisely, which becomes difficult when there are hundreds of assessments to choose from for each disorder. The second hurdle is how regularly these assessments can be carried out as they usually include long questionnaires which can be tedious to complete. The founders of Cambridge Adaptive Testing have developed products that utilise computer adaptive testing to overcome these hurdles.
This type of testing involves users answering questions which are not predetermined, unlike current assessments, in order to precisely measure their level of distress. While the first question presented is random, each of the following questions is influenced by the previous answers. Computer adaptive testing is able to select the most appropriate questions based on answers, drawing from a large data bank of pre-existing questionnaires. The linked questions make the assessment become progressively more tailored towards the user’s mental state and focused on the user’s specific areas of distress. As the questions are unique every time, users are also unlikely to experience response fatigue when completing the assessment on a regular basis.
One of the products using this technology, Artemis-A, has been designed especially for university and school settings. This product allows users to carry out a mental health assessment within three minutes. This is a much shorter time frame compared to the fifteen minutes minimum for most pre-existing questionnaires. The improved efficiency of this personalised approach could help identify mental health issues more easily and before they escalate. Aligned with that perspective, the startup has taken their initiative to combat mental health crises further, by supporting organisations with applying this innovative approach to assessment in different settings.
When it comes to mental health assessments, the founders were already familiar with problems in the field given their academic backgrounds, with Professor Jones being a psychiatrist as well as an epidemiologist and Dr Stochl, a psychometrician. The problem they were faced with was choosing the best assessment method out of several in any given context, which is crucial for understanding the underlying constructs of mental health and distress. An alternative needs to be able to measure distress precisely for any following action to be successful. These ideas culminated into the founding of Cambridge Adaptive Testing in 2024, with Dr. Stochl and Professor Jones having worked together on a project since 2018.
For the purposes of a large project, funded by the Wellcome Trust, they collected answers to a dozen questionnaires from over 2500 young adults. The two discussed that this could be approached in a simpler way - by using computer adaptive testing. As Professor Jones was already aware of how universities and schools were facing mental health challenges, they decided to apply their innovation in that context first. They used the data they had from their Wellcome Trust project to develop the first prototype.
During this time, they also focused on expanding their product line by developing another application more appropriate for work settings, this especially focused on employees and job seekers. This approach would help organisations understand who in their cohort needs help. Their technology had only been used in a research context, however with the progress they had made alongside the positive feedback, the founders were ready to make their products available to the market.
The founders have tested Artemis-A with school and university students to develop and validate their product. Based on the positive feedback and demand expressed by these institutions for their product, the founders are aware of just how much appetite there is for their product in both the public and private sector. This testing has further revealed over 1500 university students as well as numerous schools were willing to use Artemis-A on a weekly basis. Currently they are in the middle of market research and are ready to start pitching to investment committees. They have already secured over £900,000 in funding from Cambridge Enterprise, Innovate UK and several university sources.
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