{"id":611316,"date":"2019-10-09T08:00:23","date_gmt":"2019-10-09T15:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/?p=611316"},"modified":"2022-11-07T11:47:33","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T19:47:33","slug":"data-science-and-ml-for-human-well-being-with-jina-suh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/podcast\/data-science-and-ml-for-human-well-being-with-jina-suh\/","title":{"rendered":"Data science and ML for human well-being with Jina Suh"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2019\/09\/Jina-Shuh_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-611322 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2019\/09\/Jina-Shuh_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"black & white image of Jina Suh\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2019\/09\/Jina-Shuh_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2019\/09\/Jina-Shuh_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2019\/09\/Jina-Shuh_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2019\/09\/Jina-Shuh_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-1066x600.jpg 1066w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2019\/09\/Jina-Shuh_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-655x368.jpg 655w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2019\/09\/Jina-Shuh_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-343x193.jpg 343w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2019\/09\/Jina-Shuh_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-640x360.jpg 640w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2019\/09\/Jina-Shuh_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-960x540.jpg 960w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2019\/09\/Jina-Shuh_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-1280x720.jpg 1280w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2019\/09\/Jina-Shuh_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788.jpg 1400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/h3>\n<h3>Episode 93, October 9, 2019<\/h3>\n<p>Using technology to help us improve our health is nothing new: a quick web search returns hundreds of apps and devices claiming to help us get fit, quit smoking, master anxiety or just \u201cfind our center.\u201d What is new is a serious cohort of researchers exploring how artificial emotional intelligence, or AEI, could help us understand ourselves better and, when used in concert with human caregivers, enhance our well-being. One of those researchers is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/people\/jinsuh\/\">Jina Suh<\/a>, a former Xbox developer who got hooked on research and is now an RSDE in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/group\/human-understanding-and-empathy\/\">Human Understanding and Empathy group<\/a> at MSR, as well as a PhD student in computer science at the University of Washington.<\/p>\n<p>On today\u2019s podcast, Jina shares her passion for creating technologies that promote emotional resilience and mental health; gives us an inside look at an innovative research collaboration that aims to improve collaborative care for cancer patients with depression; and tells us an emotional story of how, on the brink of quitting her job, she found inspiration to get back in the game and begin a new career in research for human well-being.<\/p>\n<h3>Related:<\/h3>\n<ul type=\"disc\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/podcast\">Microsoft Research Podcast<\/a>: View more podcasts on Microsoft.com<\/li>\n<li><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/microsoft-research-a-podcast\/id1318021537?mt=2\">iTunes<\/a>: Subscribe and listen to new podcasts each week on iTunes<\/li>\n<li><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/subscribebyemail.com\/www.blubrry.com\/feeds\/microsoftresearch.xml\">Email<\/a>: Subscribe and listen by email<\/li>\n<li><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/subscribeonandroid.com\/www.blubrry.com\/feeds\/microsoftresearch.xml\">Android<\/a>: Subscribe and listen on Android<\/li>\n<li><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/4ndjUXyL0hH1FXHgwIiTWU\">Spotify<\/a>: Listen on Spotify<\/li>\n<li><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/www.blubrry.com\/feeds\/microsoftresearch.xml\">RSS feed<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/note.microsoft.com\/ww-registration-microsoft-research-newsletter-s.html?wt.mc_id=S-webpage_podcast\">Microsoft Research Newsletter<\/a>: Sign up to receive the latest news from Microsoft Research<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Transcript<\/h3>\n<p>Jina Suh: There\u2019s a huge opportunity, an unmet need, of our technology being more understanding of us and us being more understanding of what the capabilities of the technology are so we can have this rich, meaningful experience, collaborating with the technologies and working with the technologies. So in that sense, making our technology more emotionally aware is a key part in making that experience meaningful.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: You\u2019re listening to the Microsoft Research Podcast, a show that brings you closer to the cutting-edge of technology research and the scientists behind it. I\u2019m your host, Gretchen Huizinga.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Using technology to help us improve our health is nothing new: a quick web search returns hundreds of apps and devices claiming to help us get fit, quit smoking, master anxiety or just \u201cfind our center.\u201d What is new is a serious cohort of researchers exploring how artificial emotional intelligence, or AEI, could help us understand ourselves better and, when used in concert with human caregivers, enhance our well-being. One of those researchers is Jina Suh, a former Xbox developer who got hooked on research and is now an RSDE in the Human Understanding and Empathy group at MSR, as well as a PhD student in computer science at the University of Washington.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>On today\u2019s podcast, Jina shares her passion for creating technologies that promote emotional resilience and mental health; gives us an inside look at an innovative research collaboration that aims to improve collaborative care for cancer patients with depression; and tells us an emotional story of how, on the brink of quitting her job, she found inspiration to get back in the game and begin a new career in research for human well-being. That and much more on this episode of the Microsoft Research Podcast.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>(music plays)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Jina Suh, welcome to the podcast.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: Thank you.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: You work in an interesting space, Jina. your title is Research Software Design Engineer. You\u2019re currently working in a group called HUE, or the Human Understanding and Empathy group at MSR, and you\u2019re beginning your doctoral studies in computer science at the University of Washington. In broad strokes tell us what motivates you to do the work you do and what gets you up in the morning.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: What gets me up in the morning is actually an alarm clock! No, but really it\u2019s my daughter. She\u2019s really my inspiration. I get up to do what I set out to do because I want to make the world a better place for her. I want to show that, you know, being a working mom is hard, but it\u2019s really rewarding, and that learning never stops. So I want to show her that you can redefine yourself at any age, under any circumstances. So, I do work in technology for human understanding and wellbeing. So, I think in terms of mental health and human wellbeing, I think all of us, at some point, go through experiences where we feel like we\u2019re not in control of our emotions or our lives, we go through very stressful moments, we go through very sad moments. I think there\u2019s a huge opportunity for us to develop technologies that helps us understand, you know, who we are, what are the feelings that we\u2019re having, and really help us reflect and be the better version of ourselves.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Where is it that we would need technology to help us be \u201cbetter versions of ourselves\u201d or to overcome obstacles in our emotional and mental health?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: I think, in a lot of ways, we have the capability to kind of look at what we\u2019ve done and reflect on our past and figure out why we\u2019re feeling certain ways, but that takes effort and motivation, and training and practice, too. So a lot of people need professional health through, you know, therapies to develop the skills in order to reflect, but I think technology, especially with multimodal sensing technologies, we have the opportunity to bring information to the person and help them look at their behaviors in ways that human memories cannot fathom, right?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: In some ways, what I\u2019m hearing you say is that, if we can set a timer or an alarm for some physical thing we have to do, why couldn\u2019t we have technology prompt us on things that we have to do for our mental health?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: Right, and a lot of our mental health influences our productivity and our work and our thinking and our decision making. So I think it\u2019s absolutely necessary for us to schedule for ourselves to reflect, and also practice the skills that we need to do to reflect and be mindful, just like we practice for work and for exercises.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Well, we\u2019ll get to the specifics on that in a second, but let\u2019s go back upstream a little bit. You have a dev background, but you say now you only code when you need to. When do you need to?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: Well, when I have an idea!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Okay, cool, I was wondering about that! You\u2019ve also done some work in machine learning and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/research-area\/human-computer-interaction\/\">HCI<\/a> and you say you\u2019re a proud alumnus of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/people\/patrice\/\">Patrice Simard\u2019s<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/group\/machine-teaching-group\/\">Machine Teaching group<\/a>. Tell us a little bit about your previous work and how it\u2019s informed the work that you do now.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: So I started out as a developer in Xbox. I worked in Xbox for seven-plus years and I always admired the design team and, and loved working with them, and, you know, try to understand the rationale behind their design choices and I wanted to do more high level thinking, you know, be closer to our customers and, you know, build things are more meaningful and have genuine reasons why we\u2019re building them. So, I stumbled across something called HCI, Human Computer Interaction, or HCD, Human Centered Design, and at the same time I stumbled across this Machine Teaching group which claimed to be this focus on like studying the people interacting with machines. And you know when I started working in the group, I also started my part time master\u2019s program at University of Washington in Human Centered Design and Engineering. So, at first, I was just helping the group build their machine teaching tool, and then I got to help build prototypes for user studies and then help run the studies and, eventually, design studies using the knowledge that I was gaining from my masters and also through work and I just fell in love with the science of it all and really observing people using the tools in the way that you hypothesize so\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Yeah.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: \u2026 slowly and maturely I started doing more independent research, forming my own projects, and contributing to research, and I\u2019m pretty much hooked now! I am a firm believer of the machine teaching principles, you know this idea of empowering the human teacher. And I believe I can take those learnings and apply in other domains.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Right, and some exciting ones too.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: Mmm-hmm.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: I want to talk a bit more in depth about this Human Understanding and Empathy, or HUE, group. Tell us in more detail what\u2019s going on in HUE and who\u2019s doing what right now.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: The mission of the HUE team is to really empower people by creating and inventing new technologies that promote emotional resilience and well-being. It\u2019s really grounded in the fact that emotions are fundamental to human interactions and they influence everything that we do starting from learning, memory, decision making and all these other aspects of our lives. So, you know, how do we bring emotional intelligence to technology is kind of the core our research.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Tell me a little bit more about this idea of emotional intelligence and emotional resilience because this isn\u2019t something we normally associate with computer science, especially in the research areas.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: As humans, we actually generate a lot of data about how we\u2019re feeling or what we\u2019re thinking, we have body language, we have the way that we speak, kind of the faces that we make. It\u2019s really difficult to process all of that data all at once. So we need the help from computers and technology to not only capture all of that information, but also help us make sense of the data by analyzing the information.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Okay.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: Computers have been ubiquitous in our lives and we expect more meaningful interactions with our technologies and we want our technologies to understand this in some sense. And I think there\u2019s a huge opportunity, an unmet need, of our technology being more understanding of us and us being more understanding of what the capabilities of the technology are so we can have this rich, meaningful experience, collaborating with the technologies and working with the technologies. So in that sense, making our technology more emotionally aware is a key part in making that experience meaningful.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: So there\u2019s a lot to unpack there in terms of how you translate human emotions into machine language, and we\u2019ll get there in a second, but I want to go back to this idea of human centered design. To me, that implies there\u2019s been a significant amount of design that wasn\u2019t human centered. What can we do to change that?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: So I think we miss the mark in two ways. One is that we often simplify humans because it makes the problem more elegant and easy to solve. And we see this happening in machine learning research, you know, humans are mindless label generating oracles. You know, if you collect enough labels on whether a person on this photo is happy or not we can build emotionally intelligent models, um, but the truth is humans are a lot more complex than that, and we tend to ignore the things that are really difficult. So, you know, I talk to a lot of data scientists about bias in machine learning, you know, everybody knows that bias is a real problem but, because it\u2019s hard to tackle, and it\u2019s not their area of expertise, you know, it\u2019s ignored or deprioritized. So that\u2019s one thing. Another thing is that, you know, we give ourselves too much credit. You know, we assume that we know the problem and jump to solutions too quickly. We say to ourselves that users don\u2019t know what they need if you ask them. You know, I don\u2019t know if you know the famous quote by Henry Ford: \u201cIf you ask people what they needed they\u2019d say faster horse.\u201d Umm\u2026 So I think if you do your user research right, you\u2019ll not only find the right problems but also, you know, through this iterative design process, you\u2019ll discover the right solution that is, the automobile! You know, not only that you will also be able to contextualize your solution in more detail in real life situations. And, you know, the best part of my job is, actually, talking to users about their problems and hearing their frustrations and complaints. And really, the hardest part is not jumping to solutions and it takes effort and discipline to stay true to your users\u2019 problems and we often ignore this step, so talk to the users!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: When we talked about human health and wellbeing, we talked about some of the problems human practitioners face, and you mentioned two specific ways that technology might help us attack these problems. And they were sensing and intervention. Could you unpack these concepts for us and tell us how they might play out in the human and technical worlds? How might technology augment and fill in human gaps here?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: I want to use productivity as an example since we are a productivity company!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Right.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: So, you know, people go through a wide range of emotions throughout their workday and we have certain events or experiences, maybe a bad meeting, which could trigger negative emotions states like anxiety and stress, and that leads to unhealthy behaviors or loss of productivity or even poor decision making. So, you know, first step of coping with negative emotional states like stress would be awareness, which not only involves understanding the triggers that led to this stress but reflecting how your stress is presented in your behavior. So that\u2019s when sensing comes in, because it\u2019s difficult for people to associate these triggers with their behaviors and the emotions. So multimodal sensing assists people with the collection of contextual data and it might actually help you learn salient features and patterns that actually correlate the stress and negative emotional states to your behaviors, right? So that\u2019s the multimodal sensing part. And then there\u2019s the intervention part where we want to help people make sense of their behaviors and actually do something about it. Perhaps interact with the sensing technology to tweak it, personalize it, you know, which is an important machine teaching moment, and work with this emotionally intelligent agent to maybe surface interventions at the right moments. You know, so you can imagine having a just-in-time cognitive reframing for some people. This could be after-the-fact reflection for some other people. Studies have shown that the best time to practice some of these interventions is when the person is at his or her best self\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Hmmm!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: \u2026so providing the right intervention at the right time is key for sustaining engagement in mental health care.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Well, let me interrupt here. What might that look like, a just-in-time intervention?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: Mmm.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: If I\u2019m stressed, and my device, whatever it is, that senses it, alerts me and proposes that I reflect and so on, do I have to wait till at my \u201cbetter self\u201d before I can intervene on myself, as it were?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: I think that\u2019s where the personalization comes in. Everybody\u2019s different. So imagine you have anger management problems.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: I\u2026 I don\u2019t have to imagine\u2026!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: And some, some intelligent thing tells you, hey, you\u2019re about to have an angry bout\u2026 you would be even more angry! Or, some people want to get interventions. Some people want others to tell them what to do. We have done studies in the past where we\u2019ve analyzed different types of people, what kinds of control they want to have. So people who are more, you know, quote-unquote control freaks\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Yeah.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: \u2026are less likely to want to engage in these just-in-time behaviors, and people who are less control freaks are more likely. So we really need to personalize and really understand the person and be able to give the control to the person to adjust and tweak these settings.<\/p>\n<p>(music plays)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: I want to talk about the collaboration between the University of Washington and Microsoft Research. I know you\u2019ve a foot in both places. So we just talked about bridging gaps between humans and machines and how one can complement the other, but there\u2019s also gaps that exist between people. Talk about why it\u2019s important to have both medical and technical experts working together in this hybrid space.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: We try to make meaningful contributions to the space of human well-being and, hopefully, make notable differences in mental health. We really need expertise in clinical psychology, but because we don\u2019t have the expertise in clinical psychology in-house, we have to work with people from outside of our company. So, our <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/Microsoft\/PocketSkills\">Pocket Skills<\/a>, which is a mobile app that we developed, that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/people\/marycz\/\">Mary Czerwinski<\/a>, our manager, spearheaded \u2013 and we collaborated with Marsha Linehan who is the creator and expert in Dialectical Behavior Therapy, DBT, and Chelsea Wilks who is a clinical psychologist \u2013 we collaborated with them to translate this proven, in-session therapy technique to a digital format in a mobile app. And currently, I\u2019m working with University of Washington Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences faculties to develop technologies that we\u2019re actually going to build and test its clinical efficacy. So again, without the experts in these fields, we are not able to truly validate the efficacies of these technologies. I think there is a significant community within the medical field where they develop these apps, and they actually do test for clinical efficacy, but on the technology side, I think we have an opportunity to inform the design and the implementation of some of the technologies in the medical field, and we also have an opportunity to gain the knowledge and expertise that medical specialists have and bring it to the technologists so that we actually do build things that are useful.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Let\u2019s talk about a specific project you\u2019re working on called \u2013 are you ready? \u2013 Designing Technology Enhanced Collaborative Care for Cancer Patients with Depression. Usually long titles like that have some clever acronym but no, this one doesn\u2019t even make a word\u2026 I don\u2019t know, do you have a nickname for it?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: No. It\u2019s really hard!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Someone\u2019s got to figure a name out\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: I know.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: \u2026that rolls of the tongue. In any case, I want you to talk about this research in detail because our listeners may not even know much about the topic, let alone the technical approach to helping with the intervention. So what are some of the underlying problems in what you call collaborative care, and why do you think technology could help?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: So, I think I need to explain what collaborative care is first. So a collaborative care model is one implementation model where, basically, behavioral healthcare or mental healthcare is tightly integrated into whatever medical care setting. So it could be primary care, and in my case it\u2019s cancer care. The idea is that, you know, cancer patients do develop mental health disorders because they\u2019re going through tremendous stress. If the medical team discovers that you need this additional mental health support because you have depression, anxiety and other things, they engage what they call care coordinators, or care managers, to help you treat your psycho-social needs. And you have psychiatrists if you need additional, you know, medication support. Or if you develop a mental health disorder that\u2019s complex, you involve psychiatrists who cannot only consult on the cases but also provide kind of medication prescription support. So it\u2019s this idea of putting the patient at the center, and having the oncologist, or providers or physicians, work with your care providers who deliver the day-to-day behavioral health care and the psychiatrist who is giving guidance on medication and prescriptions. So that\u2019s collaborative care, in a nutshell.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Yeah.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: And these care managers, they\u2019re often social workers, and not only are they supposed to give you this behavioral health care \u2013 whether it\u2019s, you know, BA, behavioral activation, or CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, or whatever these interventions and treatments \u2013 not only are they tasked to do that, they\u2019re also tasked to do these navigational support things. You know, financial aid, making sure you have housing, making sure you\u2019re taking your medication, making sure you can get to the cancer center and get the care and get the infusion and treatment and whatnot\u2026 so they\u2019re overwhelmed. They\u2019re truly overwhelmed. So, what are some ways that we can reduce the workload of these social workers? So one of the things that we noticed is that these social workers are having to do a lot of things during their sessions with their patients including things like administrating validated mental health scales \u2013 so PHQ9, which measures depression, and GAT7 which measures anxiety \u2013 and that takes away ten minutes out of a thirty minute session. So, one third of your session is spent on administrating this thing. So, you know, you could do it outside of the session. You could do it at the waiting room, that\u2019s great, but, in reality, these patients come in and out of the clinics almost daily because they\u2019re getting infusions, so they\u2019re really burned out and they don\u2019t want to see another person, they just want to go home!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Right, and sleep!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: So, you know, adding this additional burden, like you have to stay in the waiting room for this much longer to fill out this form, or sometimes they cancel appointments and reschedule appointments because they\u2019re just burned out&#8230; What are ways to help these patients engage in mental health care on their own, you know, sometimes without having to come to the clinic? And then, also, help social workers be less burdened with the workload that they have. So, one of the things that we could do is, you know, offline remote assessment, so have technology that pings the patients once in a while and measures their depression and anxiety, and when that scale goes up, you know, if you measure high depression all of a sudden, bring them in for care.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Is that self-reporting then?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: Mmm-hmm.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Okay.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: Yeah. Most of these scales are done as a self-reporting tool anyway. They get handed a piece of paper in the\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: But sometimes it\u2019s in a supervised setting.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: Mmm-hmm.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: And my question would be, if I\u2019m depressed and I\u2019m alone, am I just going to hit the snooze button?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: Right, and that already happens, even without technology, right? A lot of the patients don\u2019t want to come into the clinic. Especially when they\u2019re depressed, they don\u2019t want to engage. So that\u2019s already a challenge, but most of the times, these patients are sitting in their bed using their phones or watching TV. Using these opportunities to bring up, you know, hey, it\u2019s really important to know where you are in terms of your depression and anxiety scale, like, do you want to self-assess right now? Or, hey, it looks like you\u2019ve been sitting at your bed for a long time. You need to go out and talk a walk. Let\u2019s go do that. One of the things that we discovered that patients are missing in this traditional mental health care sense is that, because social work in cancer settings, it\u2019s not billable, which means that there\u2019s no formal scheduling for them, which means they don\u2019t get to go through the standard process that other providers do. Basically, they don\u2019t get treated as an official provider which means there\u2019s no after-visit summary that you get when you go see your primary physician, right? You get this, like, little printed out paper that says you\u2019re supposed to do this, go take these medications\u2026 These social workers don\u2019t get to do that because they don\u2019t even have a scheduler.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Right.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: So a lot of times what you end up discussing during the sessions are forgotten or it\u2019s on a written on a piece of sticky note and lost. But we also know that people carry around their cellphones all the time. So if they could have the after-visit summaries and notes and their action items \u2013 things that they are supposed to do \u2013 if we can have technology that nudges them in the right way to actually take those actions and also help them remember what they\u2019re supposed to do, because it\u2019s written down and it\u2019s recorded in your app, that\u2019s a huge area of opportunity that is not there currently.<\/p>\n<p>(music plays)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: We\u2019re at the point in the podcast where I ask what could possibly go wrong. I\u2019m imagining, as we talk, that I\u2019m a cancer patient, and depressed, and anyone who\u2019s ever struggled with depression for any reason knows how difficult it is to do anything, even if you\u2019re reminded, you know? At what point, if I have my phone telling me something, is there a handoff where there\u2019s a human? Because I might just ignore my machine, but somebody who hugs me, or somebody who\u2019s talking to me face-to-face and says, \u201cGretchen, I\u2019m here for you. We can do this together.\u201d Is there a bridge to the human through what you\u2019re talking about in your interventions?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: Right. What we\u2019re trying to do is not replace humans in any way, but augment the human capabilities. I think the social workers are already overloaded. So if we can reduce their workload by making their work a lot more efficient, now they have the opportunity to give a call to their patients and say, hey, how are you doing? One of the things that we discovered is, a lot of the patients go through these crisis moments and they want to talk to somebody. They\u2019re not suicidal, so they don\u2019t see the need to call the suicide hotline, but they\u2019re just going through a hard time. And we ask them, you know, how can we help support that? And most of the time people said, I just want to text with my social worker. I just want to text with somebody that I know, who understands my situation. So we\u2019re trying to brainstorm ideas around, how do we make that possible? And also understand that social workers are burdened, and they have a life, too, outside of work\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: They might need the app as well!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: \u2026you know crises don\u2019t happen between the nine to five, right?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Right.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: The business hours\u2026 so how do we make that possible by balancing the needs of both individuals? It\u2019s a really tough problem. But I think there\u2019s a way, you know? Obviously reducing the workload of the social workers and having them have more time to engage is one thing. And giving the patients opportunity, and maybe a social group and support network, to talk about their issues would be another way.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Mmm-hmm. Well let\u2019s go in a little further on the \u201cwhat keeps you up at night?\u201d Even as we\u2019ve talked, you\u2019ve triggered some thoughts in my mind. Number one is the privacy issues that are involved, especially when they deal with my mental health, so that\u2019s one area I\u2019d like you to talk about. And the other one is the shift towards machines and devices to meet our needs rather than humans. I know that I\u2019ve just unloaded a bunch of thoughts. Unload back on me!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: I think, again, I want to stress that we\u2019re trying to take advantage of technology as a mediator to help connect people as opposed to replace the human-to-human connection. So, the metric that I would probably optimize for is not, how often does this patient use my technology, but how often does this person engage in the care and actually engage with the social worker? So, you know, what keeps me up at night is, do I have the right objectives and I am actually meeting the goals of that objective? In terms of the privacy, yeah, I think one thing that people assume is you have the sensing technology, it\u2019s creepy, you know, it\u2019s watching me all the time, but you also have to understand, we\u2019re not forcing you to have this. We want you to use this technology for yourself, for your own good, so if you\u2019re not comfortable, don\u2019t do it! But if you see the need and if you see the benefit of this technology in helping you remember what happened, helping you reflect, helping you get out of that tough situation, then by all means, why wouldn\u2019t you use it? What I\u2019m trying to get at is that there are some points in your therapy session where your social worker or your therapist, will ask, you know, what happened. And you may realize that you can\u2019t remember, you can\u2019t recall. That makes the session less efficient. I think there are ways to negotiate this boundary that you have of your comfort level and that negotiation has to happen by you realizing, through the help of your social worker and therapist, where\u2019s the line that you want to draw and what\u2019s the need that you have?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: To me it all goes back to settings, you know? I\u2019m going to pick the strength of intervention or sensing that I want.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: Yeah. But you as a patient and you as a user sometimes don\u2019t know where that setting has to be and it\u2019s really the therapist or the social worker that helps you decide, okay, this data is really important because with this data I\u2019m going to make this clinical adjustment, and that\u2019s a buy-in process.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Sure.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: The social worker has to convince that that data is important for clinical reasons.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: You know that\u2019s a super good point because there might be people that really, really need it and say, I don\u2019t need it, and that\u2019s where you\u2019re looking at them going, yeah, you do. Let\u2019s work on getting you to the point where you can embrace. Who\u2019s your audience for this? Is this technology really for the social worker and the therapist, not so much the oncologist or the primary care physician?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: Right now we\u2019re targeting just the social workers and the therapists and the care managers because they\u2019re the ones that know everything. They\u2019re the go-to person for the patient\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Sort of the hub\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: \u2026they\u2019re the hub of all the information.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Okay. It\u2019s story time, here on the Microsoft Research Podcast. We know about the work you\u2019re doing but not much about you, as a person, except the fact that you\u2019re, like, doing a lot of work and you\u2019ve had a lot of experiences already in your fairly short life. What\u2019s your background? How did young Jina Suh get involved in high tech and how did she end up at Microsoft Research?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: I studied physics as an undergrad, and astronomy. I did research in astrophysics. I got involved in particle physics and I aspired to be an experimental particle physicist. I worked at CERN for a summer\u2026 So I went on to get my PhD in physics, and felt like I was making kind of a very abstract contribution which, if anybody\u2019s studying physics, like, by all means, go for it! But for me, personally, I felt like I needed to do something that was directly impactful to people. So I started looking around for jobs, and there are only two kinds of jobs that you could get as a physics graduate which is quantitative trading in finance or some sort of a data science or, you know, computer science in tech.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Yeah.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: So I got an internship at Microsoft, I fell in love with it, and I just decided, I\u2019m going to pursue my career in coding. I don\u2019t have a computer science background at all. The only class that I took was an intro to C, and, you know, there I learned how to manipulate some memories and arrays and things like that, but I never really knew how to code, so I picked all of that up at work! Somehow I started as an SDET. I started as a tester and then I moved my way through becoming a developer\u2026 so all of that happened while I was working in Xbox. And this was during the launch of Xbox One. And I don\u2019t know if you understand the pressure that you feel when you\u2019re not only shipping software, but you\u2019re also shipping brand new hardware. We were working day and night, over the weekends, and I had a 4-year-old at the time, and I asked myself, what am I doing here? I have a 4-year-old at home! So right after the Xbox One release, I had decided to quit my job. I wanted to become a stay-at-home mom and dedicate myself to my child. And I had an opportunity to give a talk on behalf of somebody at Grace Hopper, and I was like, okay, I\u2019m just going to go do it, and, you know, I told myself I\u2019m going to quit my job. After this conference, I\u2019m going to tell my manager. At the time, the keynote speaker was Sheryl Sandberg and I had heard about Lean In. I didn\u2019t read it. But I figured, not only is she the keynote speaker \u2013 I was also invited to a breakfast with her \u2013 so I\u2019d better know this person! So, my husband put Lean In on the Kindle. I started reading it from the airport. I read it on the plane. I read it at the hotel when I got there. I stayed up all night reading the book just crying my eyes out. Crying my eyes out. Why I am deciding to quit my job? I can\u2019t do this! I can\u2019t add to that number of women who gave up. So that gave me a lot of hope to, you know, pick myself back up, get back on the field. So, that\u2019s when I started looking into other job opportunities. I needed to get out of what I was doing, I need to do something that\u2019s meaningful, I need to do something that has good work-life balance! But also, you know, it\u2019s something I can be passionate about and I looked towards Microsoft Research because somebody else told me, oh, yeah, there are developer positions at Microsoft Research! Really? I didn\u2019t know that! So I applied. I had great interviews. I fell in love with the people that I was talking with \u2013 with the project, the idea of helping people, empowering people, developing these technologies, studying people \u2013 I just fell in love with it all. And that\u2019s how I got started in Microsoft Research.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: As we close, I always ask my guests to give us some parting thoughts and I usually ask it in terms of advice to our listeners, but I want to tweak the question and ask it less as advice, and more as, what excites you most about where you\u2019re heading with research? What technology wave do you want to catch and ride?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: So, right now, there are a lot of changes that are happening in mental health. You know, we\u2019re putting mental health as the number one epidemic, people are not afraid to talk about it\u2026 you know, we see the epidemic in teens, they\u2019re becoming more depressed. Right now we\u2019re seeing changes in policy, we\u2019re seeing changes to healthcare, in terms of mental health. So I think this is the right moment to really get into the space of mental health and have that conversation. We need to have that conversation now, so that it\u2019s not too late. Ten years from now, we have this emotionally intelligent agent, you know, having to figure out, like, what does it mean? How does it impact our lives? If we get there are the very beginning of it, I think we will evolve with the rest of the world, we will evolve with the policy changes that are happening, the insurance changes that are happening, the attitude changes and stigma changes that are happening. So I want to be part of that conversation. Now!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Jina Suh, thank you so much for joining us today. It\u2019s been delightful.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jina Suh: Thank you for having me.<\/p>\n<p>(music plays)<\/p>\n<p>To learn more about Jina Suh, and the latest in technologies for human health and well-being, visit <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/\">Microsoft.com\/research<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Using technology to help us improve our health is nothing new: a quick web search returns hundreds of apps and devices claiming to help us get fit, quit smoking, master anxiety or just \u201cfind our center.\u201d What is new is a serious cohort of researchers exploring how artificial emotional intelligence, or AEI, could help us understand ourselves better and, when used in concert with human caregivers, enhance our well-being. One of those researchers is Jina Suh, a former Xbox developer who got hooked on research and is now an RSDE in the Human Understanding and Empathy group at MSR, as well as a PhD student in computer science at the University of Washington.<\/p>\n<p>On today\u2019s podcast, Jina shares her passion for creating technologies that promote emotional resilience and mental health; gives us an inside look at an innovative research collaboration that aims to improve collaborative care for cancer patients with depression; and tells us an emotional story of how, on the brink of quitting her job, she found inspiration to get back in the game and begin a new career in research for human well-being.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38022,"featured_media":611322,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"msr-url-field":"https:\/\/player.blubrry.com\/id\/49638214","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[240054],"tags":[],"research-area":[13556,13554],"msr-region":[],"msr-event-type":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-promo-type":[],"msr-podcast-series":[],"class_list":["post-611316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-msr-podcast","msr-research-area-artificial-intelligence","msr-research-area-human-computer-interaction","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_event_details":{"start":"","end":"","location":""},"podcast_url":"https:\/\/player.blubrry.com\/id\/49638214","podcast_episode":"","msr_research_lab":[199565],"msr_impact_theme":[],"related-publications":[],"related-downloads":[],"related-videos":[],"related-academic-programs":[],"related-groups":[144941,578422],"related-projects":[],"related-events":[],"related-researchers":[],"msr_type":"Post","featured_image_thumbnail":"<img width=\"960\" height=\"540\" src=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2019\/09\/Jina-Shuh_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-960x540.jpg\" class=\"img-object-cover\" alt=\"Jina Suh - 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