Mental illness is the leading cause of disability in the world.
Diagnosing mental health syndromes have proved challenging for
clinicians. This has led to delay in diagnosis, misdiagnosis or
unfortunately in some a lack of diagnosis. Furthermore the majority of
individuals who have mental disorders have more than one condition
(co-morbid), which are essential to screen and diagnosis early to
achieve symptom remission and achieve full functional recovery.
In the private sector, mental health claims have eclipsed physical
injury leading to economic loss in the billions globally, and yet there
is no widely available psychiatric screening tool for risk assessment .
Currently in the Canadian climate of mental health the only options
offered originate from an organizational management approach, or
peer-to-peer and self-monitoring strategies. In our discussions with the
private sector industry, the need and demand for a medical strategy to
address issues of mental health would outstrip any conventional ability
to meet the need.
Recognizing the need for an effective and convenient assessment tool to
foster early detection of mental health disorders, improve functional
outcomes and prevent mental illness, we developed EarlyDetect (ED). The
ED program asks users to answer a series of clinical assessment
questionnaires for depression, anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, ADHD,
and alcohol use disorder, using our proprietary Life History
Questionnaire, and a functional assessment in the context of
work/school, family life, and social life. Other assessment tools are
under development, including PTSD screening, polysubstance abuse
screening, and functional assessment focusing on improving work
productivity and reducing absenteeism. This tool has flexibility to
adapt to the specific needs of clients to screen for other mental health
symptoms or disorders and measure functional and quality of life
outcomes.
Our current research comparing ED to single-blind diagnoses made by a
certified clinician shows superior performance from ED in diagnosing
mental illnesses when compared to stand-alone assessment tools typically
used to screen for these disorders. Through a collaboration with the
Computational Psychiatry Group at the University of Alberta
(https://comppsych.weebly.com/), we have meticulously developed a
scientifically and statistically sound correspondence calculation that
generates a hybrid (mathematically and clinically derived) risk
assessment score, which our testing has shown to be significantly more
accurate than existing stand-alone self-report assessments. Our
machine-learning study for screening depression has recently been
published in the Journal of Affective Disorders Reports (Liu et al.,
2021a). More recently, we have published a user experience study (Liu et
al., 2021b). Patients are able to complete in 10-12 minutes and are able
to easily navigate through various sections of the app. Currently, we
just received acceptance of our paper that further supports the
effectiveness of the tool in screening for Bipolar Disoder (Liu et al,
2021, JADReports).
We are making continued research and development efforts to further
develop the contents of the app, improve prediction algorithms, and user
experience. Since the development of the iOS version, we developed a
cloud-based version of ED on Microsoft Azure cloud, with cross-platform
assessment and data management capability, and are working towards
further validation of the impact of ED on patient's outcomes in primary
health care clinics and in the private sector.
Our service targets the health care system assisting clinicians in
facilitating diagnosis and co-morbid diagnosis and easing referral time,
tracking documentation, and enhancing diagnostic accuracy and measuring
functional and quality of life outcomes. We also target the private
sector, where companies of all sizes and configurations can utilize
mental health screening to facilitate employee wellness and risk
management. Our customers will benefit from significantly reduced costs
of absenteeism and presenteeism, an enhanced corporate culture of safety
and wellness, and a positive reputation among customers and competitors
for valuing and proactively addressing employee mental health.