Researchers from Holmusk recently participated in sharing scientific discoveries and thought leadership at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology.
Holmusk shared findings from a study that investigated the relationship between symptom burden and outcomes inpatients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Researchers used NeuroBlu, Holmusk’s flagship data and analytics platform that generates new insights from real-world data derived from electronic health records (EHRs), to build a cohort of 4,400 patients with schizophrenia.
Although EHRs provide a wealth of clinically meaningful data, much of this data is unstructured and difficult to use for comparative research purposes. Holmusk used natural language processing (NLP) models to identify the presence of positive symptoms, such as paranoia, delusions, and hallucinations, and negative symptoms, such as poor motivation and reduced emotional expression and social interaction.
Researchers then used linear regression to compare symptom burden with disease severity using the Clinical Global Impression-Severity (CGI-S) score. NeuroBlu contains CGI-S scores for over 47,000 patients, enabling longitudinal research that analyzes outcomes.
The study found that higher symptom burden was associated not only with greater severity of illness, but also with longer stays in psychiatric hospitals.
“Using the powerful data analytics capabilities of NeuroBlu as well as Holmusk’s natural language processing models, we were able to add valuable information on the relationship of symptom burden with clinical outcomes that could help in the future care of patients with schizophrenia,” said lead author Rashmi Patel, MD, PhD, Holmusk’s Vice President for Medical and Scientific Affairs. “These findings suggest that proactive and early identification of high symptom burden in patients with schizophrenia could help to improve long-term outcomes.”
Additional contributors to the study included Emily Palmer, PhD; Rifqi Alkhatib; Yida Won; Soon Nan Wee; Simran Thadani, MSc; Lu Wang, PhD; and Miguel Rentería, PhD.
Discussing RWE Applications for Treatment Development
Holmusk’s Chief Medical Officer, Scott Kollins, PhD, also attended the meeting and chaired a panel titled “Challenges and Opportunities in the Use of Real-World Evidence to Advance Treatment Development in Behavioral Health.” The panel examined the advances made in the application of real-world evidence in other therapeutic areas—and explored why these advances have been more challenging in the behavioral health space. The panel also convened diverse stakeholders from across industry, academia, and regulatory bodies to discuss opportunities for innovation in this area. Participants included Luca Pani, MD, Professor of Psychiatry at University of Miami; Shuvayu Sen, PhD, Vice President and Head of Value Evidence and Real World Evidence at Otsuka Pharmaceutical Companies; Durga
Borkar, MD, Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology at Duke Ophthalmology; and Tiffany Farchione, MD, FAPA, Director of Division of Psychiatry for the US Food and Drug Administration.
