We’re happy to announce that Devon Sandel-Fernandez, PhD and Adam Kuczynski, PhD have been selected to lead our department’s efforts in digital innovation and artificial intelligence. With philanthropic support and funding from the Garvey Institute for Brain Health Solutions, they are currently working in collaboration with Tim Althoff, PhD, an associate professor of computer science and engineering, and PBSCI Chair Jürgen Unützer, MD, MPH, MA to develop an AI-supported simulation training laboratory with simulated patients that trainees can use to hone their clinical skills.
“We have rapidly expanding technology at our fingertips to help address patient needs and improve mental health outcomes,” says Dr. Sandel-Fernandez. “In this unique role, I hope to support the department’s ability to responsibly harness innovative tools.”
With this new technology, trainees will be able to interact, on-demand, with a diverse range of simulated patients representing different clinical presentations and learning goals. The system will provide live feedback on skills being practiced, increase trainee learning opportunities in a low-stakes setting, and it will supplement the in-person instruction they receive from their clinical supervisors. Ultimately, we hope this tool can be used to increase our capacity to train a wide range of health care professionals, family members, and caregivers to work with individuals affected by a range of mental health and addiction problems.
“Digital technologies and artificial intelligence hold promise in increasing access to high-quality mental health services that can help to reduce morbidity and mortality at scale,” says Dr. Kuczynski. “I’m grateful to work alongside a brilliant and supportive team of researchers and clinicians in developing tools to train future generations of healthcare providers in caring more effectively for our community.”
Dr. Kuczynski, who cares for patients on the long-term civil commitment units at the UWMC-Northwest Center for Behavioral Health and Learning, is also exploring the feasibility of implementing digital mental health technologies in the inpatient setting with the ultimate goal of improving care for people with serious mental illness.
Dr. Sandel-Fernandez, who is completing a T-32 research training fellowship program in our department, will be seeing patients at the UWMC Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic at Roosevelt and exploring the use of digital technologies in this setting. She is also working on a pilot study of app-based suicide risk monitoring in UW primary care clinics, leveraging large language models (LLMs) to identify suicide risk from TikTok and YouTube use data and she is developing an approach to identify personalized risk of momentary alcohol use.