SBIR Phase I: An Automated Assistant for Mental Health

该SBIR一期项目旨在解决自《患者保护和平价医疗法案》签署以来医疗专业人员面临的挑战。今天的心理健康治疗师必须为增加的病人负荷做好准备，因为投保的美国人越来越多，同时降低医疗保健的总体成本。必须通过消除不必要的测试、程序和重复的患者护理来简化医疗保健提供过程。该项目将为治疗师提供工具，以：(1)加快和改善患者诊断，(2)准备一个可能产生快速和积极结果的治疗过程，以及(3)随时了解直接影响他们日常工作的科学发现。深入的研究问题需要解决，以解析医学文献的技术术语，并使其与治疗师会议记录中典型的自由形式叙述相协调。该项目将产生新的方法，将患者记录和医疗资源（如精神疾病诊断和统计手册（DSM））转换为医学调整的语义图，并与丰富的精神健康本体合并。此外，该项目将研究先进的文本相似算法，以使患者数据与DSM疾病、高质量治疗计划选择和相关研究成果相一致。更广泛的影响/商业潜力：该项目的更广泛/商业影响是为心理健康专业人员提供自动医疗助理，使他们有时间专注于患者互动，并使医疗保健更加个性化。政府机构和保险公司将从中受益，因为治疗师的护理效率和质量的提高将导致医疗成本的降低，特别是因为精神健康障碍往往表现为一般的医疗状况。世界卫生组织报告称，精神障碍占全球疾病负担的近12%，到2020年，这些疾病将占因疾病损失的残疾调整生命年的近15%。此外，由于精神障碍的负担在年轻人中最大，而年轻人是人口中最具生产力的部分，因此改善精神健康诊断和治疗将对整个美国社会产生重大影响。患者群体还将受益于个人费用的降低，以及照顾精神病患者所带来的社会负担的减轻。

This SBIR Phase I project proposes to address the challenges medical professionals face since the signing of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Today's mental health therapist must prepare for an increased patient load as the pool of insured Americans grows, while simultaneously reducing the overall cost of healthcare. The healthcare delivery process must be streamlined by eliminating unnecessary tests, procedures, and repeat patient care. This project will provide therapists tools to: (1) speed up and improve patient diagnosis, (2) prepare a course of treatment that is likely to yield a fast and positive patient outcome, and (3) keep informed about scientific findings that directly impacting their daily work. Deep research issues need to be solved to parse the technical jargon of medical literature and reconcile that with the free form narrative typical in therapist session notes. The project will produce novel methods to transform patient records and medical resources like the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) into a medically tuned semantic graph that is merged with a rich mental health ontology. Moreover, the project will research advanced text similarity algorithms to align patient data with DSM disorders, quality treatment plan options, and relevant research findings. Broader Impacts/ Commercial Potential: The broader/commercial impact of this project is to deliver an automated medical assistant to mental health professionals that will give them time to focus on patient interactions and make healthcare more personal. Government agencies and insurance companies will benefit as increased efficiency and quality of care from therapists will lead to lower healthcare costs, especially because mental health disorders often manifest themselves as general medical conditions. The World Health Organization reports that mental disorders account for nearly 12% of the global burden of disease, and that by 2020 these disorders will account for nearly 15% of disability-adjusted life-years lost to illness. Further because the burden of mental disorders is maximal in young adults, the most productive section of the population, improvements to mental health diagnosis and treatment will significantly impact the American society as a whole. The patient population will also benefit from lowered personal costs as well as a lessened societal burden that comes with taking care of the mentally ill.