SBIR Phase I: An Automated Assistant for Mental Health

该SBIR第一阶段项目建议解决自签署《患者保护和平价医疗法案》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做好准备，以应对随着美国参保人数的增加而增加的患者负担，同时降低医疗保健的总体成本。必须通过取消不必要的测试、程序和重复的患者护理来简化医疗保健提供流程。该项目将为治疗师提供工具，以：(1)加快和改进患者诊断，(2)准备可能产生快速和积极患者结果的疗程，以及(3)随时了解直接影响他们日常工作的科学发现。需要解决深入的研究问题，以解析医学文献的技术术语，并将其与治疗师会议笔记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，并与丰富的心理健康本体合并。此外，该项目将研究先进的文本相似性算法，以使患者数据与DSM障碍、高质量的治疗计划选项和相关研究结果保持一致。更广泛的影响/商业潜力：该项目的更广泛/商业影响是为精神健康专业人员提供自动化医疗助理，使他们有时间专注于患者互动，并使医疗保健更加个人化。政府机构和保险公司将受益，因为治疗师提高效率和护理质量将导致医疗成本降低，特别是因为精神健康障碍往往表现为一般医疗状况。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，这些障碍将占因病失去的残疾调整寿命年的近15%。此外，由于精神障碍的负担在年轻人中是最大的，这是人口中生产力最高的部分，精神健康诊断和治疗的改善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成本的降低以及照顾精神病患者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.