Happify, maker of apps for mental health and emotional well-being, is branching out into research by launching a program called Happify Labs.
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This move will enable the New York-based startup to team with academic researchers to conduct clinical trials on interventions related to positive psychology and neuroscience. It also will give researchers access to data from Happify users — chiefly large-scale text analysis of those conducting well-being interventions, the company said.
“We have always wanted the information on Happify to be based in science,” said Chief Scientist Acacia Parks. “Happify Labs is the natural progression of that.”
Initially, Happify will team with psychologists Sonja Lyubomirsky of the University of California, Riverside, and Judith Moskowitz of Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine. Lyubormirsky in particular has been a pioneer in well-being interventions based on research, Parks said.
Happify is partially funding a study by Moskowitz that seeks to create a well-being intervention for people with Type 2 diabetes. Moskowitz is leading a program that will test hemoglobin A1c levels in diabetic patients over a four-week period.
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This will be the first time that Happify will be able to test objective data, not just rely on self-reported measures of well-being, Parks explained.
“The collaboration with Happify Labs provides a unique opportunity to test our hypotheses about positive emotion and health behavior in a format that is widely accessible,” Moskowitz said in a statement provide by Happify. “It’s an exciting nexus of applied and basic research that will advance science and potentially have an impact on the well being of people living with a very challenging chronic illness.”
Though Happify Labs is just being publicly announced Monday, the program already has one peer-reviewed research paper on its CV. Parks, a psychologist at Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio, participated in a University of Pennsylvania-led study of relationships between usage, language and patient outcomes on Happify. The study appeared online August 31 in the open-access Journal of Medical Internet Research.
“It is important to establish outside relationships with researchers,” Parks said.
Photo: Happify