Prof. Schwarz, which data are particularly relevant for psychiatric research at CIMH?

Most psychiatric disorders are very complex: biographical, biological, and social factors interact with one another. Modern imaging methods enable us to examine the function of patients' brains to better understand how clinical symptoms develop. However, it is evident from the often significant hereditary component of psychiatric disorders that other data are highly relevant for psychiatric research, such as data from the field of genetics. Modern mobile health techniques also open up an insight into the living environments and mental states of our patients, and thus new methods for improved treatment and prevention. Analyzing these types of data together using modern methods of artificial intelligence is the goal of the new Hector Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Psychiatry.

Why should patients give broad consent for the use of their health data?

By agreeing to the use of their health data for research, patients are making an important contribution to us being able to better understand, treat, and prevent mental illnesses in the future. In the field of artificial intelligence where new technologies develop rapidly, broad consent is an important requirement, for example for the development of personalized treatment approaches. Of course maintaining data protection and security is always the number one priority. Fortunately, our initial tests have shown that the vast majority of patients are also very willing to give their consent.

What added value does data networking provide, particularly for research at CIMH?

On the one hand digital networking is the basis for being able to analyze various types of data together and thus identify new connections, for example between symptoms of an illness and biological patterns. This networking is also critical to developing a database that is sufficiently large to enable methods from the field of artificial intelligence to be used and to enable research results to be validated. The national data networking in the new German Center for Mental Health, in which CIMH is participating, will play a particularly important role.

How does CIMH implement the collection and processing of health data?

At CIMH, we are currently building highly modern infrastructure that enables the harmonized collection and assessment of data using the latest analysis processes. This includes the diagnosis and admission center for patients and test subjects through which health data are collected in standardized processes, the Center for Innovative Psychiatric and Psychotherapeutic Research (ZIPP) with its wide range of technologies, and the biobank. In the past few months, we have also established hyper-converged IT infrastructure through which hardware resources for data analysis can be provided in a flexible manner.

Where are we on the path to personalized treatment in psychiatry and what role does AI play in that?

Psychiatric disorders are typically caused by the highly complex interaction of individual risk and protection factors. AI enables us to analyze features that individually only have a minimal effect on the risk, together, thus identifying patterns in complex data sets. These patterns may enable us to better understand the causes of psychiatric disorders and adjust the treatment to individual risk and protection factors, thus making it more effective. This is one of the main goals of the new Hector Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Psychiatry.

About Emanuel Schwarz

Emanuel Schwarz studied molecular biotechnology in Munich. In his PhD thesis, which he wrote at the University of Cambridge, he looked at molecular markers in schizophrenia. After his PhD, he headed up the Biostatistics Department at the Cambridge Centre of Neuropsychiatric Research. He has been at CIMH since 2012 and works at the Clinic of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, where he has been in charge of the Research Group on Translational Bioinformatics in Psychiatry (Emmy-Noether Group) since 2014. In 2023 he took over the Head of the HITKIP. He is interested in developing artificial intelligence to improve the understanding of the biology of mental illnesses.

Hector Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Psychiatry (HITKIP)

The goal of the newly-founded institute at CIMH is to use artificial intelligence to identify the causes of mental illnesses and improve treatments in the long term. The research facility is being funded by the Hector Foundation II to the tune of 11.5 million euros. HITKIP is led by Prof. Emanuel Schwarz, Ph.D.

Using artificial intelligence and specially developed algorithms, the scientists want to research the causes of mental illnesses and improve detection and treatment at an individual level. Artificial intelligence measures have led to entirely new options for identify patterns in highly complex data sets. For this approach, scientific data is combined with information from clinical care to provide information about the respective success of treatment. From this, models are developed to adapt the treatment carefully to the individual risk and protection factors.

German Center for Mental Health (DZPG)

The DZPG is researching the development and progression of mental illnesses over a person's lifetime. The center is trying to identify individual risk and protection factors. The goal is to develop personalized therapies that can prevent the development and a chronic progression of mental illnesses.

CIMH is coordinating one of six excellent locations in the DZPG and is providing one of the speakers in the form of the Chair of the Executive Board at CIMH, Dr. Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg. CIMH forms the research network ZIHUb (> zihub.de) together with Heidelberg University and Ulm University and the German Cancer Research Center. The DZPG is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and started work in May 2023.

Hyper-converged IT infrastructure (HCI)

An HCI solution combines computing power, memory, storage area networks, and virtualization in a node or several nodes. This replaces traditional infrastructures that are made up of separate servers, storage area networks, and data storage systems. An HCI platform ensures central and secure storage of several petabytes of data, enabling it to perform large-volume data analysis by bringing together clinical, multiomic, and imaging data.