What role can AI play in mental health care? Let’s talk about it! In this year's final episode of Informatics in the Round, we explore how AI can assist both patients seeking diagnoses and treatments for mental health disorders as well as therapists looking to improve their clinical practice. While AI offers exciting possibilities, we also address important concerns around data privacy, potential bias, and the need to maintain human connection in the therapeutic process. It was a fitting discussion to to wrap up our year of AI-themed episodes.

For our expert consultant, we invited Dr. Torrey Creed, an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine and founder of the Penn Collaborative for CBT and Implementation Science. As an NIH-funded researcher, her work focuses on creating pragmatic and sustainable strategies to increase access to high-quality mental health care, especially in low-resourced communities. She also serves as the Senior Implementation Consultant for Lyssn.io, which leverages AI to help scale multiple aspects of clinical care.

We also welcomed back one of our favorite musicians, Jane Bach, to bring her perspective! Jane is an award-winning songwriter who has written for some of the biggest names in music, including Reba McEntire, Tammy Wynette, Collin Raye, and JoDee Messine. She was also recently inducted into the New York State Country Songwriters Hall of Fame.

We wanted to spend some time in this episode honoring our friend, Nolan Neal, who passed away in summer of 2022. Nolan was upfront about his struggles with mental health, and we want to dedicate this episode to him. Nolan, thank you for sharing your life with us through your music. We hope this episode can help serve others like you and make a contribution to providing better mental health care to all.

Mentioned in the episode:

-"Shadow of the Man I Used to Be" by Nolan Neal

-Nolan Neal on America's Got Talent

-"Already Gone" written by Jane Bach, performed by Natalia Malo

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Can AI do our jobs better than we can? Let’s test it!

You might have noticed that this episode got off to a strange start… who were those people talking anyway? That, my friends, was Google NotebookLM’s best shot at recording this very podcast. In it, two AI-generated guests conduct an ironic “deep dive” into the topic we are discussing in this episode: whether AI will come to replace certain jobs and how it will change existing jobs in our healthcare system and beyond.

For this episode, we had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Marylyn Ritchie, a Professor of Genetics and the Director of the Institute for Biomedical Informatics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. An expert in translational bioinformatics, her research focuses on using clinical data to discover the genetic architecture underlying common diseases like cancer and cardiovascular disease. In April, she was appointed Vice Dean of Artificial Intelligence and Computing where she works to develop and implement an AI strategy for the Penn Medicine health system.

We also finally got a songwriter back on our guest panel. Collin Frisch is an indie-pop singer-songwriter who describes himself as “like Ed Sheeran, but less talented and better looking.” After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 2023, he took on the role of Creative Director at the Bridge Church near Trenton, New Jersey. We were so grateful that Collin could represent the right side of the brain in this conversation.

Lastly, we welcomed our co-host Harris Bland back to the show!

We turn a bit philosophical in this episode; while we discuss AI’s potential to rewire and create jobs, we also talk about the undiscovered fields of medicine where humans must still blaze the path forward. Inevitably, our conversation turned into a reflection about which characteristics AI can’t yet emulate, the very things that make us human and—for now—irreplaceable.

Mentioned in the episode:

-What eMERGE actually means:

-”Will A.I. Kill Meaningless Jobs?” by Emma Goldberg, New York Times, August 2024

-Waymo Stand-off video

-”Swiss cheese model” coined by Dr. James Reason in “Human Error: Models and Management,” British Medical Journal, 2000.

Songs mentioned in this episode:

“Unwritten” by Natasha Bedingfield (2004)

“She Bangs” by William Hung (2008) (originally performed by Ricky Martin)

“Shake It Off” by Taylor Swift (2014)

“Anti-Hero” by Taylor Swift (2022)

“My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” by Taylor Swift (2024)

“All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version) (From The Vault)” by Taylor Swift (2021)

“Ruin Your Heart” by Collin Frisch (2021)

Make sure to follow our Instagram, X, Threads, and TikTok accounts so you can stay up to date on all our new content. Also don't forget to follow us on X @kbjohnsonmd and @htbland21. Thanks for listening!

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What exactly is a “learning health system”? In several of our episodes, you’ve heard us talk about how data collection has modernized through new technologies and enhanced approaches to clinical trials. But now that we have all that data, we need to transform it into clinical practice. Learning health systems are all about completing this virtuous cycle from scientific discovery to implementation, and yet, there are few that exist and work well. In this episode, you’ll hear us discuss (and perhaps debate) what a true learning health system looks like, as well as how informatics can help lead the charge.

Up first on our panel of distinguished guests is Dr. Genevieve Melton-Meaux, a Professor of Surgery and Senior Associate Dean of Health Informatics and Data Science at the University of Minnesota. Among her many accolades, she is a Past President of the American College of Medical Informatics, current President of the American Medical Informatics Association, and Director for the Center of Learning Health System Sciences at Minnesota. Her research focuses on clinical natural language processing, surgical informatics, and optimizing AI best practices.

We were also joined by Dr. Chuck Friedman, a Professor of Medical Education and Chair of the Department of Learning Health Sciences at the University of Michigan Medical School. He is also the editor-in-chief of the open-access journal Learning Health Systems. Drawing from his time at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology in the U.S. Department for Health and Human Services, he helped transform Michigan’s medical education department into one of the first in the nation to focus on learning health at all levels, including large-scale information infrastructure.

Finally, we had Dr. Peter Embí, Professor and Chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics and Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Prior, he served as President and CEO of the Regenstrief Institute, a not-for-profit health care research organization in Indianapolis, Indiana that seeks to develop, conduct, and disseminate scientific research across communities. A Past President of the American Medical Informatics Association, his research centers on data-driven learning health systems.

Tackling a topic like this required top-notch guests, and they delivered! We hope you enjoy listening.

Links mentioned in this episode:

-Evaluation Methods in Biomedical and Health Informatics by Charles P. Friedman, Jeremy C. Wyatt, Joan S. Ash

-“Where’s the Science in Medical Informatics?” by C.P. Friedman

-Learn more about the Indiana Network for Patient Care

-Patti Brennan’s Presentation referred to as “Care Between the Care”: “High-Reliability, Person-Centered Health Care Systems: It Can’t Happen Without the National Library of Medicine,” presented at GoldLab Symposium 2018

-“Creating Local Learning Health Systems: Thinking Globally, Act Locally” by William E. Smoyer, Peter J. Embí, Susan Moffatt-Bruce

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