August 2026
After two years of newsletters and six phases of co-design, this issue carries the message the whole project has been building towards: Phase VI is open, and we are looking for 10 people to take MEMoPAD home. š
Phase VI Everything until now has happened in workshops, in labs, and on paper. Now, we are bringing MEMoPAD into real life: a working watch and companion app, used in your own days, for up to five weeks.
Who weāre looking for:
Adults living with an anxiety disorder; Based in or able to travel to Bristol, since devices are handed over in person, in a 30-minute session; Comfortable wearing a smartwatch daily and checking in through the app.
You keep the Pixel Watch 2, and there is a Ā£55 voucher after the closing focus group.
š More info and applications at this link: https://go.uwe.ac.uk/MEMoPADphaseVIrescheduled
Places are limited to 10! If this isnāt right for you, forwarding this to someone it might suit is just as valuable.
2 -1 Good news I have joined the UKRI Mental Health Platform as an Associate Member, a network for researchers working outside its main hubs who share its aims and values. It opens collaborations a single PhD project cannot reach on its own.
And MEMoPADās co-design story has been accepted for the MHP Research Summit 2026 in Sheffield on 8 October, as both a talk and a poster, selected by an external panel, and that panel included people with lived experience. Not a secondary detail, for a project built on co-design.
And one that didnāt landā¦ MEMoPAD applied to the Primary Care Ready programme by Health Innovation West of England and was not selected. The reason is fair: the real-world evidence isnāt there yet. Phase VI is precisely how that starts to change.
Opportunity alert Something you might be interested in: JMIR Mental Health has opened a theme issue titled āDoes It Work, Does It Translate, and Does It Help or Harm?ā on evaluating digital mental health tools. It is open until 31 January 2027, and the editor is John Torous, MD MBI. Worth a look if you work in this space. š https://mental.jmir.org/announcements/726
The end of the PhD is approaching, this is the last sprint of a long marathon. Thank you to everyone who has supported the project so far. Help us spread the word about Phase VI, Iām sure youāll love what weāve developed!