Interprofessional George Mason researchers awarded more than $1 million to improve outcomes for patients with depression

Researchers Farrokh Alemi and Kevin Lybarger receive George Mason University’s first Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) award to develop innovative Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, including large language models, for improving antidepressant recommendations.

AI will soon receive a dose of empathy with the goal of helping to match people with depression to their best-fit medication. A team led by Farrokh Alemi, a professor in the College of Public Health (CPH), and Kevin Lybarger, an assistant professor in the College of Engineering and Computing (CEC), received $1,049,998 in research funding from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to continue their work on developing an AI system that helps patients find the right depression medications.

With this funding support, Co-PIs Alemi and Lybarger will hone large language models (LLMs) to address known challenges in AI, including mitigating biases, reducing the potential for inaccurate information, and incorporating an empathetic tone, according to Alemi. 

The new study will introduce an innovative way for AI to help patients make medication decisions. The AI system will engage patients in natural-language conversations to collect information about their medical history. The system will draw upon more than 10 million patient experiences with 15 different oral antidepressants and a National Institutes of Health All of Us database, which includes records from more than 80,000 participants with major depressive disorders, to help create a plan that is statistically likely to succeed. Alemi and Lybarger believe this will help alleviate the trial and error that can lead to negative patient outcomes.

The researchers will also introduce a first-of-its-kind patient simulator capable of mimicking various medical, linguistic, and behavioral characteristics. This simulator will be used to test and refine the AI system by simulating diverse patient scenarios, including infrequent but critical events such as suicidal ideation, to ensure the system’s recommendations are safe, culturally sensitive, and empathetic.

“This study was selected for its potential to address a high-priority methodological gap in patient-centered comparative clinical effectiveness research,” said PCORI Executive Director Nakela L. Cook. “We look forward to following the study’s progress and working with George Mason to share the results.” 

This is the first PCORI-funded study that George Mason has received. “Depression is a major public health problem and we are excited to see the development of new AI-based decision tools, leveraging the multidisciplinary talents of our college to help tackle it,” said  CPH Associate Dean of Research Alison Cuellar.

"This innovative study promises to generate methodologies for using AI for medical decision-support and for empowering patients to make critical health decisions beyond mental health,” says Özlem Uzuner, chair of CEC’s Department of Information Sciences and Technology.

This study is one of the latest funded by PCORI to examine which medical treatments work best, where and when treatment falls flat, and how to address the gaps. These studies deliver results that guide researchers in planning future studies and provide patients, their caregivers, and clinicians with the evidence-based information needed to make better-informed health and health care decisions.