#78, Uncovering New Treatments For Severe Mental Illness with David Newton from Akrivia Health

AWS Health Innovation Podcast

Mental health struggles affect millions, yet treatment options remain limited. Akrivia Health sees vast potential in patient data to change that. On this episode of the AWS Health Innovation Podcast we speak with David Newton, Co-Founder and COO of Akrivia Health, a company that provides data research, clinical trial optimization, and molecular characterization for mental health and dementia. With over 20 billion data points across 5 million electronic health records, Akrivia has built one of the world's most extensive structured psychiatric datasets.

Massive Psychiatric Datasets

Akrivia has assembled one of the largest structured psychiatric data repositories globally, with over 20 billion data points across 5 million electronic health records from 18 healthcare organizations.

Advanced NLP Pipelines

To extract insights, Akrivia combines large language models with specialized models in efficient NLP pipelines that balance accuracy and cost-effectiveness.

Cloud Enables Scale

Cloud computing infrastructure provides the storage and computation for Akrivia to deploy its NLP at scale across massive datasets.

Granular Symptom Analysis

Akrivia recently expanded its NLP to extract and classify over 400 psychiatric symptoms from clinical notes, enabling more granular analysis.

Linking Mental and Physical Health

By connecting mental health records with primary care data, Akrivia aims to develop whole-patient histories to uncover new insights.

Genomics Meets EHRs

Akrivia is conducting a study linking whole genome sequencing to EHRs to identify clinical trial candidates and biological patterns.

Building Patient Trust

Akrivia takes a privacy by design approach to build patient trust, essential for a company relying on sensitive health data.

Free EHR Software for Data Access

Akrivia provides free EHR software to providers in exchange for anonymized data, which it commercializes through industry partnerships.

The Value of University Spinouts

The spinout experience provided introductions to investors and knowledge transfer support critical in Akrivia's early stages.

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