Clinical research platform
The Discovery Fund supports clinical and research data integration and analytics, leveraging large data sets to answer questions about disease trajectories, and identifying new opportunities for the prevention, early intervention, treatment and recovery from mental illness. This area of investment ensures CAMH patients are engaged as partners in new knowledge creation, participating actively in research studies to advance care.
The Discovery Fund Clinical Research Integration advisory group, chaired by Lina Chiuccariello, Senior Manager, Clinical Research, works to advance the integration of research into clinical settings with the vision of establishing sustainable, coordinated clinical research infrastructure to provide opportunity to all CAMH clinical staff, physicians and patients to participate in research to advance care.
Additional work is focused on:
- Developing infrastructure to support ground-breaking research through a core team of research analyst, coordinators, research methods specialists and research nurses integrated in our clinical settings.
- Building infrastructure to incorporate the voices of those with lived experience in every aspect of the research process at CAMH, from idea development to knowledge dissemination.
- Developing standards of excellence and aligning research processes across clinical research at CAMH.
BrainHealth Databank
The hospital-wide BrainHealth Databank team, led by the Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics, is taking an innovative approach to better understanding mental health trajectories to transform care and accelerate research. Designed to collect all types of data from patients, including electronic health record, sleep patterns, behavioural, genetic, brain structure and more, the BrainHealth Databank will become a rich resource that will advance personalized treatment for mental health in the years to come.