Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2018 Aug 22:1:37.
doi: 10.1038/s41746-018-0046-0. eCollection 2018.

Transforming Psychiatry into Data-Driven Medicine with Digital Measurement Tools

Honor Hsin  1 , Menachem Fromer  2 , Bret Peterson  1 , Collin Walter  1 , Mathias Fleck  1 , Andrew Campbell  3 , Paul Varghese  2 , Robert Califf  4   5   6
Affiliations
Review

Transforming Psychiatry into Data-Driven Medicine with Digital Measurement Tools

Honor Hsin et al. NPJ Digit Med. .

Abstract

Psychiatry has been limited by historically rooted practices centered primarily on subjective observation. Fields such as oncology have progressed toward data-driven clinical decision-making that combines subjective clinical assessment of symptoms and preferences with biological measures such as genetics, biomarkers, imaging, and integrative physiology to derive quantitative risk scores and decision support. In contrast, psychiatry has just begun to scratch the surface of measurement-based care with validated clinical questionnaires. An opportunity exists to improve modern psychiatric care with novel data streams from digital sensors combined with clinical observation and subjective self-report. The prospect of integrating this complex information with modern computational and analytical methods could advance the field, both in research and clinical practice. Here we discuss this possibility and propose some key priorities to enable these innovations toward improving clinical outcomes in the future.

Keywords: Predictive markers; Psychiatric disorders.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing interestsH.H., M.F., B.P., C.W., M.F., P.V., and R.C. are employees of and own equity in Verily Life Sciences, a company that is developing digital measurement tools. A.C. is a consultant at Verily Life Sciences. The views expressed here are those of the authors and are not official views of Verily Life Sciences.

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Kraepelin E. Die Erscheinungsformen des Irreseins (The manifestations of insanity) Hist. Psychiatry. 1992;3:509–529. doi: 10.1177/0957154X9200301208. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Hsin H, Torous J, Roberts L. An adjuvant role for mobile health in psychiatry. JAMA Psychiatry. 2016;73:103–104. doi: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2015.2839. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Tversky A, Kahneman D. Judgment under uncertainty: heuristics and biases. Science. 1974;185:1124–1131. doi: 10.1126/science.185.4157.1124. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Torous J, Baker JT. Why psychiatry needs data science and data science needs psychiatry: connecting with technology. JAMA Psychiatry. 2016;73:3–4. doi: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2015.2622. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Insel T. Digital phenotyping: technology for a new science of behavior. JAMA. 2017;318:1215–1216. doi: 10.1001/jama.2017.11295. - DOI - PubMed