DECEMBER 6, 2024
Kammarauche Aneni, MD, MHS
Assistant Professor of Child Psychiatry and of Biomedical Informatics and Data Science
Yale School of Medicine
About the Presentation: Most adolescents in need of substance misuse interventions do not receive it. Adolescents with substance misuse are at elevated risk of developing a substance use disorder, dying from an overdose or developing other mental and physical health problems. Thus, early identification of adolescents with substance misuse can lead to timely interventions. However, barriers to screening for substance misuse preclude intervention access. These barriers include lack of time for screening, provider discomfort, and lack of privacy in healthcare settings. Automating the screening process using digital tools such as games or large datasets from sources such as the electronic health record may mitigate these barriers. Games collect considerable data during play that may be used for prediction. Performance in a game is captured by in-game metrics such as reaction time, speed of task completion, or choice move in a game. These in-game metrics may reflect digital biomarkers of health outcomes. Game performance is also influenced by cognitive processes such as working memory, inhibitory control, and decision making. These cognitive processes are implicated in the development of substance misuse and, in turn, are impacted by unhealthy substance use. As such, in-game metrics may represent digital biomarkers of cognitive processes that predict substance misuse. As such these data can be leveraged to develop prediction models for substance use risk identification among adolescents. This talk will discuss findings from a pilot study using game-based data for substance misuse risk prediction among adolescents, including challenges and future directions.
About the Presenter: Dr. Kammarauche (Uche) Aneni is a child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist. She is an assistant professor of child psychiatry, biomedical informatics, and data science. She is the Principal Investigator of the ACCESS Lab at the Yale Child Study Center. The overall goal of her research is to improve access to preventive interventions for adolescents at risk for substance use and mental health problems. Her research interests focus on developing, testing, and implementing preventive digital interventions, particularly culturally informed family-based interventions for racial/ethnic minorities in community-based settings. She is also investigating the utility of digital tools in identifying adolescents at risk for substance use and mental disorders through digital biomarkers and machine learning approaches. Dr. Aneni’s research is supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Center for Technology and Behavioral Health, National Institutes of Health (NIH) AIM-AHEAD program, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation.