Can Behavioral Health Be Objective and Data-Driven?

Before microscopes, doctors diagnosed as best they could using external symptoms. Now we test for the presence of specific bacteria, viruses, or lesions. Dr. Thomas Young, chief medical officer and founder of Proem Behavioral Health, is convinced that psychiatry and behavioral health are also entering an age where objective data collected from the body will drive diagnoses and treatment. Figure 1 shows some statistics about disorders tracked by Proem. Figure 1: Measures used by Proem Behavioral Health and their uses Two advances have come together over the past few years to enable better diagnoses and treatments: one in data collection and the other in data interpretation. In data collection, consumer devices such as the Apple Watch, Fitbit, etc. can collect reasonably accurate data on important physical functions such as heart rate variability and sleep cycles. In data interpretation, rigorous research has connected the data with diagnostic suggestions, which have to be combined with the clinicians’ subjective assessments to come up with diagnoses. Data can also suggest personalized treatments that are likely to work on the individual. Facial expressions recorded by a camera and voice patterns detected on a phone also yield increasingly precise information about chronic conditions as well as changes in the patient’s condition. Young explains that patient device data is commonly used to determine how fast a disabled patient can be rehabilitated, when an injured at...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - Category: Information Technology Authors: Tags: AI/Machine Learning Analytics/Big Data Clinical Health IT Company Healthcare IT Behavior Health Behavioral Health Research Dr. Thomas Young Healthcare AI mental health Mental Health AI Proem Behavioral Health Source Type: blogs