Artificial Intelligence in Mental Health (AIM)

The Artificial Intelligence in Mental Health (AIM) lab is co-led by the Chair of Precision Psychiatry Professor Nikolaos Koutsouleris and the Lecturer in Artificial Intelligence in Mental Health Dr Paris Alexandros Lalousis. It is a new lab based in the Department of Psychosis Studies at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience. Our focus is to use AI techniques to improve understanding of mental health disorders and improve diagnostic, prognostic, and treatment tools available for mental health clinicians.

The underlying mechanisms of mental health disorders involve a complex mix of genetic, environmental, and biological factors. Individuals with the same diagnosis often have different underlying biological mechanisms and individuals with a different diagnosis often have similar biological mechanisms. This results in a difficulty to understand and predict illness presentations, response to treatment, and long-term functional outcomes.

In an effort to understand these mechanisms, several different types of data have been collected over the years including clinical, cognitive, environmental, blood, genetic and neuroimaging data. Recent technological and methodological advances, large international collaborations, and the availability Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and biobanks have further increased the volume of data available.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) holds tremendous potential to mitigate this problem. Through advanced data analytics and machine learning algorithms AI can recognise patterns in data at the phenotypic, biological, and environmental levels. Our lab harnesses the power of various AI approaches for the most pressing questions in mental health care.