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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.

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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.

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