A first-of-its-kind study from Holmusk's NeuroBlu Database revealed that patients who score highest for severity and instability were 45% more likely to be hospitalized, according to a press release.
Holmusk, described in the press release as "a leading behavioral health real-world evidence and data analytics company," published its findings in the Lancet Psychiatry. The study is expected to be put to good use in the behavioral health care and research community, as it provides unique insight and can allow for early patient interventions and support the formulation of more targeted treatment methods.
"Our vision in creating the NeuroBlu Database was to provide the gold standard for behavioral health real-world data," said Holmusk Founder and CEO Nawal Roy. "Findings like these validate that this vision is being realized. Even more importantly, they underscore the importance of developing standardized measures across behavioral health care in order to improve patient care and outcomes."
According to the press release, Holmusk seeks to build the world's largest real-world evidence platform and resolve the issue of data poverty in health, especially in regard to behavioral health. Holmusk's NeuroBlu Database contains the de-identified electronic health records of over 1.4 million who received care for behavioral health conditions across over 30 healthcare systems in the U.S. The researchers, led by clinical psychiatrist and University of Oxford senior research fellow Maxime Taquet, studied the associations among clinical severity, instability and psychiatric hospitalization, resulting in the first-ever study exploring the potential for early clinical trajectory serving as a predictor of psychiatric hospitalization across diagnoses. Such diagnoses include major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder. The researchers found that the association between early clinical instability and eventual psychiatric hospitalization exists in both adults and children, as well as in both men and women.
"Holmusk's NeuroBlu Database is an invaluable resource whose real-world data made this analysis possible," Taquet said. "Not only does the NeuroBlu Database include frequently collected psychometric scales, such as the CGI-S used in this study, but it also includes longitudinal data across diverse treatment centers, including emergency rooms and hospitals. The completeness of this EHR-derived data enabled us to examine patients' clinical journeys and determine whether they had been admitted to the hospital within the first six months after initiating care."
The study's findings have also been presented at the annual meeting of the Academy of Managed Care in San Antonio, Texas, and the annual European Congress of Psychiatry in Paris.
