aifred health: Q&A with MENTAL

How students are using NeuroTech and Artificial Intelligence to optimize the treatment of mental illness

This week we spoke with Sonia Israel and Kelly Perlman of McGill University about the inception of MENTAL and their involvement with aifred health, a clinical decision aid for increased treatment efficacy in depression. Here’s what they had to say…

NTX: What is MENTAL and how did it start?

Sonia: MENTAL stands for McGill Enthusiasts of Neurotechnology Et Al. We started conceptualizing the club in 2015 at the NeuroTechX hack nights where people were talking about starting student clubs at the university. We try to raise awareness in neurotechnology as a growing field and provide opportunities for students to work with the hardware and devices as it can be intimidating and not super accessible as a field to get started in.

Kelly: I joined MENTAL because I was interested in the intersection between neuroscience and tech, which are two big interests of mine. Our missions are to raise awareness and give people opportunities they wouldn’t normally have. Last semester we held a workshop on how to use machine learning tools in neuroscience related projects and give everyone a taste on how it works.

NTX: What challenges did you face transitioning from a neuroscience to neurotechnology club?

Kelly: We found out about the whole area existing [of neurotechnology] back in 2015 at the NeuroTechX hack nights. For the competition last year it was definitely a bit of a challenge for us to translate our theoretical knowledge into something we could actually work with in terms of hardware but we found a lot of interest… Because of NeuroTechX who’s helped us develop our own club and linked all the universities in Montreal we’ve been able to work with ETS. They’ve held workshops for us in dealing with hardware and in exchange we would explain neuroscience theories to them or answer any other theoretical questions they had.

NTX: How did neurotechnology spark your work on aifred health?

Kelly: It started very organically out of neurotech, as a cohesive, interdisciplinary group from NeuroTechX. One of the people from the technology side told us about the IBM Watson AI XPRIZE and said “I think we have a good group here, if we come up with a project I think we should apply.” So we came up with aIfred health and we’re now official competitors in the AI XPRIZE. Aifred health is a tool for doctors that uses individual patient profiles and machine learning techniques
to help predict the most effective treatments for any given patient. We hope that by identifying which treatments will work best for which patients, while minimizing side effects, we can maximize quality of life for those suffering with mental health conditions.

Sonia: We want to bring personalized approaches to psychiatry by analyzing each individual patient’s health data and bringing an immense base of research to clinicians so that they can apply it in a pragmatic approach. We’re starting with depression, a condition that affects around 1 in 9 individuals at some point in their life. To give more context, the way it works in psychiatry right now is doctors use a “guess and check” approach to finding the right treatment plan for a patient. We’re hoping that, with this technology, we’ll be able to better predict the optimal treatment for each individual patient. It minimizes the burden on the patient in terms of their recovery time, the clinician in terms of how many times they need to see each patient and also society because as we know depression, right now, is only second to cardiovascular disease in terms of disability.

NTX: How has NeuroTechX helped the student club at McGill?

Sonia: In the beginning we received a lot of resources to help navigate our system and hit the ground running. They facilitated some hardware sponsorships so we could get the Muse and OpenBCI headsets to work with in addition to hosting the NeuroTechX demo day which really brought us together as a group. Not to mention our excellent rapport with Pizza Pizza which has helped us greatly with attendance to our events!

Kelly: NeuroTechX was super helpful in facilitating contact with all the sponsorships and events we were hosting. Hooking us up with OpenBCI like Sonia said, it was amazing.

NTX: What do you have planned for MENTAL later this year?

Sonia: We’re planning a few different workshops as well as a lecture series that bridges more between neuroscience and neurotech. We’re also looking forward to the upcoming NeuroTechX student competition in the fall.

NTX: What neurotech are you most excited to see developed and what field do you see it disrupting the most?

Kelly: I see it having a huge impact in health care and health care efficiency. Another thing I find interesting about neurotechnology is how ethics and policy will have to change over time with this new technology. There’s a lot of things to consider but I think overall if we do it right it’s going to have a very net positive effect.

Sonia: For me, in terms of technology I look forward to, I’m really interested in wearables. I think those have a big potential especially for health care in terms of early detection and prevention of very treatable diseases. I think it’s really cool to get technology that’s cost effective and accessible for anybody in the world. But like Kelly said, it’s important to prudently keep neuroethics in mind as we go about implementing these advances. There are ethical issues that are arising that in the past were in the realm of science fiction that we now have to potentially deal with so it’s really important to take proactive considerations rather than reactive.

NTX: What advice would you give to people (including students) starting in the neurotech and AI field?

Kelly: It’s a great field you won’t regret it! There’s a lot of resources if you want to learn on your own. Neurotechnology is such an interdisciplinary field that there really is something for everybody. It’s not just people that are in neuroscience or computer science, it’s more widespread than that.

Sonia: Don’t be scared. I think neurotech can be intimidating to people at first, it definitely was to me. But the truth is, no one really knows what they’re doing at the beginning until they do. NeuroTechX is a great resource, especially if you’re in a big city, otherwise I would reach out to the nearest NeuroTechX branch anyways and see what they have to offer.

MENTAL is a NeuroTechX affiliated student club at McGill University, you can learn more about their work on aifred health at http://aifredhealth.com/

You can check out the 2016 NeuroTechX demo day as discussed in this Q&A at https://youtu.be/D00yRmY3dBg and for more on NeuroTechX and student clubs, stay tuned by signing up to our newsletter! http://eepurl.com/bEQDKX

Interview conducted by Matt Herich & Benjamin De Leener