Workstream leads
Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist, University of Cambridge and CAMEO Early Intervention in Psychosis Service, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Trust
Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist, MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics, Cardiff University
Main location of work
The work is being conducted at multiple universities and NHS Trusts across the UK, directed by a leadership team from Cambridge, Cardiff, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol and London.
Workstream overview
A representative research platform will be delivered building on the globally unique, national network of Early Psychosis services.
Why the work is important
Early Psychosis is a key area of focus for the Mental Health Mission, reflecting its high level of patient, carer and societal burden, and the urgent need for the NHS to work with academic and commercial partners to implement preventive approaches and translate insights into new treatments for psychosis.
Aim
To develop a translational research UK-wide infrastructure to facilitate earlier identification, treatment and prevention of emerging psychosis.
Planned work
- To build, scale-up, deploy and evaluate the Early Psychosis Informatics into Care (EPICare) infrastructure across at least 5 geographically dispersed NHS Trusts. EPICare will enable patients to use mobile phones to input their symptoms so they, and their clinicians, can track their health over time, and
- To work towards implementing a national detection system for people at raised risk of psychotic illness to enable clinical early intervention when required and to identify potential research participants in the earliest phases of psychosis at scale
- To recruit a large cohort of patients with early psychosis from across the UK, with information on blood biomarkers and psychological, social and clinical information from mobile phones and health records. This will result in a genomic, biomarker and cellular resource linked to psychological, social and clinical data that will facilitate discovery research and help develop more personalised treatment approaches.
Patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE)
PPIE will be a key component of the programme in prioritising future research questions and outcomes, discussion of issues of data security and confidentiality, designing accessible and culturally appropriate information for patients and carers about the programme, and supporting dissemination to service users and carers and the public.
Increasing research capacity
Research activity in several geographical areas with the greatest incidence of psychosis will increase and research activity will be extended into areas currently under-represented in Early Psychosis research.
