Charité-University Medicine Berlin has established a new research partnership with the global data science company Holmusk. The strategic collaboration is focused on the collection and analysis of real-world data from psychiatry.

As Holmusk declared on 22 November, the initiative aims to improve the understanding of psychiatric diseases through evidence-based analytics.

WHY IT MATTERS

The COVID-19 pandemic has been accompanied by a growing demand for better mental health care.

As one of the largest university hospitals in Europe with over 3,000 beds, four locations and around 100 departments, the Charité in the German capital has seen the impact of COVID-19 on mental health.

Three of its medical departments in the field of psychiatry, psychotherapy and neurosciences will join the Holmusk partnership together with the German Centre for Mental Health (DZP) and the University of Potsdam.

The idea is to build a common, multi-site mental health data platform which integrates reported outcomes and assessments from both patients and clinicians.

Core aspects of the collaboration will be data protection in alignment with GDPR, as well as the identification of clinical markers for optimised diagnostics and personalised treatments.

THE LARGER TREND

Holmusk, headquartered in Singapore and New York, is dedicated to providing AI-powered analytics with the goal of building ‘the largest Real-World Evidence platform’ around behavioural health.

With NeuroBlu, the company has already developed a digital solution that can transform research data into evidence-based, actionable insights. It is based on a huge clinical dataset of more than half a million patients over two decades.

Charité and Holmusk now hope that their joint venture – platform, datasets and analytical tools - can be used to conduct larger psychiatric studies ‘on a Scandinavian scale’.

ON THE RECORD

Professor Christoph Corell, Director of Charité’s Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, stated: “This Holmusk-Charité Mental Health Departments collaboration is such an important initiative to move psychiatry towards a data driven approach and enable us to develop improved evidence based on real-world patients cared for in real-world settings.”

“Holmusk’s advanced data science capabilities provide an exciting opportunity to better monitor disease progression and treatment response on a patient level”, Corell continued.

Stefan Suter, Head of Europe at Holmusk, pointed out: “We are honoured to be the partner of choice of these important members of the Charité Mental Health Platform and to combine their deep clinical and research expertise with our advanced data science capabilities. This collaboration has the potential to significantly advance the treatment of patients with psychiatric conditions.”