Dr Andrey Kormilitzin and Dr Graham Blackman both use Artificial Intelligence (AI) as part of their work into brain and mental health in the Department of Psychiatry. Recently they contributed to a government POSTnote (Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology) on AI and mental health care. POSTnotes are flagship informational reports to give impartial information to decision-makers on emerging research areas.
Dr Kormilitzin is Senior Research Scientist in translational artificial intelligence, while Dr Blackman is an NIHR Clinical Lecturer specialising in neuropsychiatric disorders, particularly psychosis.
Dr Kormilizin: "As a technologist, am passionate about how advanced computational tools may be meaningfully helpful to clinicians, researchers and patients. In close collaboration with clinical colleagues at the Department of Psychiatry, I have been developing a range of AI/ML models across various areas. For example, a new digital triage tool, using a large collection of free text clinical notes and Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods, to alleviate the problem of “hidden waiting list” and streamline the referral process in adult specialist mental health services. More recently, my research has shifted to leveraging the semantic reasoning capabilities of privacy-preserving Large Language Models to a range of problems, including: self-harm recognition in patients with severe mental illness; identification of patients who meet criteria for difficult-to-treat depression, evaluating the response and treatments provided to children and young people with anxiety, and a new triage tool to streamline psychological assessment for young people with autism and ADHD."
Dr Blackman: "As a clinician-scientist, I am very interested in using artificial intelligence to develop clinical decision-aid tools for mental health care. Specifically, I am exploring AI’s potential to predict diagnosis and outcomes in patients experiencing psychosis, with the aim of informing clinical care. For example, I have been working on a clinical prediction model that applies NLP to electronic health records to identify patients presenting with psychosis who may have an underlying neurological, or other medical cause for their symptoms."
Read the full story on the Department of Psychiatry website.