The Vision

The scientific literature on behaviour change is vast and accumulating at an accelerating rate. However, this literature is fragmented and is inconsistently and incompletely reported. Much of it is therefore wasted. Current efforts to synthesise this evidence can take years, miss much that is relevant and fail to detect patterns that produce new knowledge. Advances in computing mean it is possible to apply Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning technologies to reveal insights from large volumes of unstructured text.

We are building a Knowledge System to identify relevant information in the world literature on behaviour change interventions, extract it into an organised form, and synthesise it to generate new insights about behaviour change. This Knowledge System can then be interrogated on demand to answer users’ questions about behaviour change. It will provide up-to-date answers drawing on knowledge integrated from a more extensive literature than humans have the capacity to review in a timely fashion. The system will also be able to explain the bases for its recommendations as well as estimate the confidence with which such statements can be made.

This project is funded by a Wellcome Collaborative Award in Science [201524/Z/16/Z]. Wellcome Collaborative Awards aim to ‘promote the development of new ideas and speed the pace of discovery’ by funding ‘teams of researchers, consisting of independent research groups, to work together on the most important scientific problems that can only be solved through collaborative efforts’.