In the first of the Mental Health Translational Research Collaboration (MH-TRC) Mission interview series, we spoke with our Data and Digital workstream leads, Professor Ann John and Professor John Ainsworth.
Ann John is Professor of Public Health and Psychiatry (Mental Health Data Science) at Swansea University and John Ainsworth is Professor of Health Informatics at the University of Manchester.
In this interview, the workstream leads share how their work strengthens the MH-TRC Mission’s digital capabilities and expertise to deliver world-class mental health research.
Tell us about your role as workstream lead and the focus/aims of the workstream.
As joint leads of the Data and Digital workstream, our role is to help ensure that the MH-TRC Mission has the data infrastructure, digital capabilities and methodological expertise needed to support world-class mental health research. The workstream brings together researchers from across the UK with expertise in health informatics, data science, artificial intelligence, digital health and clinical research.
Our focus is on making better use of the wealth of data that already exists across health and care systems, while also enabling the responsible use of newer sources of information such as smartphones, wearable devices and patient-reported outcomes.
We work closely with the other Mission workstreams to ensure that data and digital technologies can support participant recruitment, outcome measurement, stratified medicine approaches and the evaluation of new interventions.
Ultimately, we’re building the digital foundations that will allow innovative mental health treatments, therapies and technologies to be developed and evaluated more quickly and more effectively.
What problem is your workstream trying to solve?
Researchers in mental health have access to more data than ever before, but much of it remains difficult to use effectively.
Data comes from electronic health records, research databases, and other digital systems, such as smartphones but these data are often collected in different ways and stored in different places. This makes it harder to identify suitable participants for studies, or evaluate treatments efficiently, or learn from people’s experiences in the real world.
The Data and Digital workstream is working to address these challenges by developing the infrastructure, standards and tools needed to make data and digital technologies usable at scale across the MH-TRC Mission. We bring together expertise in health informatics, data science, artificial intelligence and digital health to support better recruitment into trials, better measurement of outcomes, and more personalised approaches to mental healthcare.
What are you currently working on?
The Data and Digital workstream has several work packages, being led in London, Manchester and Swansea. Projects include:
- A trial feasibility planning and recruitment for mental health studies using national datasets in partnership with NHS DigiTrials, led by Dr Saskia Sanderson, MH-TRC Mission Data Science Lead.
- The PHENOMIND project which is developing tools to standardise the creation of clinical coding phenotypes from electronic health records led by Professor John with Kenvil Souza, Research Officer at Swansea University and Mental Health Data Scientist Dr Marcos Del Pozo Baños at DATAMIND.
- The development of Ontology of Digital Markers in Mental Health to enable data from smartphones and wearables to be harmonised and features extracted through data processing software, led by Professor Ainsworth with Research Fellow Dr James Cunnigham and Research Associate Ariane Sasso at the University of Manchester.
- The provision of platforms and tools for the collection of patient generated health data in studies and trials by developing Infrastructure as a Service using Remote Assessment of Disease and Relapse, led by Professor Richard Dobson, Head of Department, Biostatistics & Health Informatics at King’s College London.
- The development of trial recruitment dashboards that use Natural Language Processing to capture text-only entities from electronic health records, such as pharmacotherapy, symptom profiles, treatment response, and adverse events, led by Robert Stewart, Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology & Clinical Informatics at King’s College London.
- The development of the MH-TRC Trusted Research Environment, led by Professor John, that will host data from projects in the MH-TRC such as EPICare and the Early Psychosis 2k cohort.
What impact is the workstream having for people with mental health conditions?
The impact of our work comes from making data for mental health research easier to use. We’re developing research platforms that enable us to combine different sources of data and methods that unlock the information from data in a way that is consistent, repeatable, and transparent.
An important part of our work is improving inclusion in research. Many people receiving mental healthcare are never approached about research opportunities, particularly if they are treated primarily in community or primary care settings.
By working with integrated care records and digital technologies, we’re helping to create new ways for people to learn about and participate in research, making studies more representative of the populations that mental health services serve.
We hope that the infrastructure we’ve built will deliver tangible benefits beyond the lifetime of the Mission. If researchers can run studies more quickly, if promising interventions can be evaluated more efficiently, and if people with mental health conditions ultimately gain access to more effective and more personalised care because of the evidence that has been generated, then we would consider the workstream to have had significant impact.
What would success look like by the end of the MH-TRC Mission in 2028?
It would mean that the UK has established a genuinely connected mental health research ecosystem where data can be used safely, responsibly and efficiently to support innovation.
People with mental health conditions will benefit from a future where better data enables faster trials, more targeted interventions, earlier access to innovation, and ultimately better outcomes through treatments that are informed by a deeper understanding of individuals and their lived experience.
Visit the dedicated MH-TRC Mission Data & Digital webpage to learn more about how the workstream is accelerating the development and evaluation of new treatments for mental health disorders.
