I am an HES associate professor at the Geneva School of Health Sciences (HES-SO) and an associate research fellow at the Swiss center for affective sciences at the University of Geneva.
My research explores how digital technologies, mobile health and serious games can contribute to mental health prevention and interventions, and how they may benefit children and patients interested in such approaches. I am particularly interested in two periods of life marked by substantial neural, psychological and social change: adolescence and the perinatal period. During these transitions, emotions, roles and identities evolve alongside brain plasticity and hormonal changes, and appropriately designed interventions may accompany and support these transitions. I am also interested in how digital health and AI are reshaping the roles and practices of healthcare professionals, and how these technologies can be developed to support patients’ health literacy.
These interests are reflected in several ongoing research projects. One SNSF-funded project examines whether a digital intervention designed to train attentional control can help reduce anxiety symptoms in adolescents. Another line of research examines postpartum depression in relation to the healthcare, social and cultural barriers that may hinder its detection and access to support. Together with doctoral researcher Emma Leavy and my colleague Prof. Laurent Gaucher, I investigate how peer support may help reduce stigma and encourage care-seeking among women at risk of or experiencing postpartum depression. Finally, through the Amnios project, my colleague Aida Navarro and I explore together with game designers how interactive narratives and educational resources can represent the emotional and social dimensions of motherhood, migration, attachment and perinatal well-being, while creating a meaningful space for reflection, empathy and dialogue in the classroom.
We examine these questions at multiple levels, from applied studies to more fundamental research, combining methods from behavioural science, computer science and game design with prisms borrowed from health psychology, cognitive and affective psychology and neuroscience.
News:
June 2026: Invited to represent the Geneva School of Health Sciences (HEdS) at the State of Geneva’s comité cantonal de la santé numérique.
November 2025: Aida Navarro (HEAD – Genève) and I received funding from the HES-SO Open and Participatory Innovation programme for the Bourgeons d’exil / Amnios project.
Sept 2023: Appointed member of CARA's Ethics and Safety Commission for a 3-year mandate. CARA provides a electronic patient record platform for each patient for Western Switzerland.
October 2023: My collaborators and I received SNSF funding for the multicentre RCT Investigating the Effect of Training Attentional Control on Emotion Regulation and anxiety in adolescents : A Randomized Controlled Trial.
September 2022: HES-SO funding domaine santé - co-applicant with Laurent Gaucher. This project will aim at evaluating the acceptance and adoption of a mobile app hosting a community of mothers. This feasibility study will also evaluate the adoption and feasibility of a randomized control trial aiming to evaluate the effect of online peer support on well-being in women at risk of developing postpartum depression.
July 2022: Finalist for the 7th Challenge debiopharm-Inartis patient quality of life with Sonali Quantius (Haplocare), Laurent Gaucher and Emma Leavy (HEDS) and the project Haplocare, an application enabling access to peer support during perinatality.
January 2022: Innosuisse funding - collaboration with the company Imito, co-applicant with Sebastian Probst (HEDS) and Guillaume Chanel (UNIGE). This project aims at working on the development of an deep neural model for allowing the monitoring of chronic wounds, as well as a serious game for chronic wound care education.
October 2021: you can view the recording of the online symposium organized the 14th Sept. 2021: “The Covid-19 Pandemic – A Digital Health Catalyst”, which aimed at highlighting some of the positive effects that the current pandemic is having on the digitization of healthcare.
February 2020: Joined the Geneva School of Health Science as an Associate Professor (Haute Ecole de Santé de Genève).
Contact:
swann.pichon [A] hesge.ch