Ricerc@Sapienza

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in clinical practice is receiving growing attention, given its potential impact on improving healthcare quality.
In particular, the integration of clinical guidelines in decision support systems and in the clinical workflow helps achieving treatment standardisation among clinicians.

A domain characterised by a scarcity of empirical data to guide clinicians' decisions is represented by psychotropic drugs prescriptions in pregnant women affected by depressive disorders. This is a particularly vulnerable group of patients for which randomised controlled trials to ascertain psychotropic drug's safety and efficacy are clearly unethical.
However, depressive symptoms during pregnancy are common (7-20%) and often require treatment, given the potentially dangerous consequences of untreated depressive symptoms for the mother and the child.

This highly interdisciplinary project aims at developing AI-based Virtual Doctors, i.e., mathematical models providing evidence-based treatment recommendations (in Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors administration during pregnancy) maximising efficacy and reducing side-effects.

Our unique team composition allows us to exploit:

1) Retrospective data spanning 5+ years (2015-2019+) from the Sapienza Centre for Prevention & Treatment of Women's Mental Health (Sant'Andrea Hospital), one of the largest centres in Italy, coordinated by the PI of this project.

2) Expert knowledge for all the relevant psychiatry domains, namely: psychopathology of mood disorders, psychopathology in pregnancy, pharmacotherapy, psychotherapy. Expertise on impact of traumatic life events on psychopathology will be covered by a post-doc position.

3) Long-term expertise in AI and Model Checking methods to design Virtual Doctors, particularly in the gynaecology domain (Tronci, coordinator of the EC FP7 PAEON project "Model Driven Computation of Treatments for Infertility Related Endocrinological Diseases").