Improving Mental Health Care Delivery via AI and Analytics

Workshop Talk

Leveraging AI and online psychotherapy to achieve efficient and coordinated

Biography

Dr. Nazanin Alavi is a staff psychiatrist and associate professor at the department of psychiatry at Queen's university. She is currently the Co- Program Medical Director at Kingston Health Sciences Centre (KHSC) and Chair of the Division of Adult Psychiatry (Acute).

After completing her medical training at Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Dr. Alavi completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Psychology Department at Queen’s university in the Mood Disorders lab. She then joined the residency training program in Psychiatry at Queen’s University and graduated in 2016 and joined department of psychiatry at University of Toronto and Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) as a staff psychiatrist.

Dr. Alavi rejoined department of psychiatry in 2019. Dr. Alavi’s research focuses on digital mental health. She has developed multiple studies on effect of online CBT in mood and anxiety disorders. She is offering online psychotherapy through a secured platform that she has developed with her team. Dr. Alavi has been recipient of national and international awards for her research including psychiatry Dan Afford award and APA Lily award. In 2019, Dr. Alavi was selected as 10 top Women Leaders in digital health by Digital Health Canada.

Workshop Talk

A rapid learning system for mental health: The case of first-episode psychosis

Biography

Dr. Manuela Ferrari is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University and a Researcher at the Douglas Hospital Research Centre. Dr. Ferrari applies participatory design to e-Mental Health interventions to enhance access to care, treatment, and client engagement with services. She has helped create different digital technologies and intervention for clinical use, including video games, apps, digital assessment and monitoring platform, and virtual reality training.

Workshop Talk

The potential impact of Quebec's health initiatives focusing on psychiatric patient care

Biography

Dr. Frank is an Associate Professor of psychiatry in the Faculty of Medicine of McGill University and the Director of a specialized clinic for severe schizophrenia at the Jewish General Hospital. He is the Director of the McGill Program of Psychodynamic Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, a member of the faculty of the Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis, and a member of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society. Formerly, he was Assistant Dean for Medical Education and Student Affairs at McGill University. He has published research regarding the teaching of psychotherapy to medical students, schizophrenia, and forensic psychiatry. Dr. Frank is on the McGill University Faculty List for Educational Excellence and was named to the American Psychiatric Association’s Nancy C. A. Roeske Certificate for Excellence. He has been nominated for Le Prix D’Excellence of L’Association des Médecins Psychiatres du Québec and the Paul Patterson Education Leadership Award of the Canadian Psychiatric Association. Dr. Frank is the treasurer of L’Association des Médecins Psychiatres du Québec. Dr. Frank has a private practice in forensic psychiatry.

Workshop Talk

Explainable Depression Detection Using Large Language Models on Social Media Data

Biography

Diana Inkpen is a Professor at the University of Ottawa, in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. She obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, Department of Computer Science. She has a M.Sc. and B.Eng. degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Her research is in applications of Natural Language Processing and Text Mining. She organized seven international workshops and she was a program co-chair for the 25th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI 2012, Toronto, ON, May 2012) conference. She is the editor-in-chief of the Computational Intelligence journal and an associate editor for the Natural Language Engineering journal. She was an invited speaker for the Applied Natural Language Processing track at the 29th Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference (FLAIRS 2016, Key Largo, FL, May 2016), for the 28th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI 2015, Halifax, NS, June 2015), and International Symposium on Information Management and Big Data (SimBig 2015, Cuzco, Peru, September 2015). She published a book on Natural Language Processing for Social Media (Morgan and Claypool Publishers, Synthesis Lectures on Human Language Technologies, the third edition appeared in 2020), 10 book chapters, more than 35 journal articles and more than 120 conference papers. She received many research grants, from which the majority include intensive industrial collaborations.

Workshop Talk

The potential impact of Quebec's health initiatives focusing on psychiatric patient care

Biography

Dr. Karl Looper is Psychiatrist-in-Chief of the Jewish General Hospital and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at McGill University. He graduated from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Ottawa in 1995, completed his residency in Psychiatry at McGill University in 2000 as well as a fellowship in Psychosomatic Medicine 2001 and MSc in 2002. He has served as the Program Director for the Psychiatry Residency Program of McGill University and has led the Department of Psychiatry of the Jewish General Hospital since 2014. His main research interests are in psychosomatic medicine and mental health service development.

Workshop Talk

The challenges in delivering integrated mental health care: The case of depression

Biography

Dr. Milev completed his medical degree in Sofia, Bulgaria in 1983, obtained Specialty of Psychiatry in Bulgaria, MRCPsych in England and FRCPC in Canada and defended PhD in Forensic Psychiatry. In 1995 he moved to Regina, Canada where he became Medical Director of the Mental Health Clinic. In 2001 he was appointed Clinical Director of the Mood Disorder Research and Treatment Service in Kingston. From 2007 until 2017 he was the Head of Department of Psychiatry at Queen’s University and affiliated teaching hospitals. From 2017 until 2023 he was the Director of Centre for Neuroscience Studies at Queen’s University and in 2018 he was appointed as Vice President, Medical and Academic Affairs at Providence Care Hospital. Since 2022 he is also the Executive Chair for CANMAT.

He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (UK) and a Distinguished Fellow of both Canadian and American Psychiatric Associations.

Dr. Milev is actively involved in research in Depression, Bipolar Disorder, and other mental disorders. Main areas of his research include stigma, sleep architecture, psychopharmacological and neurostimulation treatments. Most recent focus of his research have been biomarkers for treatment response in depression, as part of the CAN-BIND integrated discovery program. Another major focus recently has been microbiome manipulation for treatment of mood and anxiety disorders.

Dr. Milev has over 220 peer reviewed publications and book chapters. He has led many symposia, workshops and panel discussions at conferences and has presented numerous lectures to psychiatrists, primary care providers and other health professionals. Dr. Milev is involved actively in undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate teaching, including supervision of Masters and PhD students. He has co-authored several CANMAT guidelines for management of patients with Major Depressive Disorder and Bipolar Disorders. He has won several prizes and awards.

Workshop Talk

Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on mental health patients via analytics

Biography

Vedat Verter Prof. Vedat Verter is a Professor and Stephen J.R. Smith Chair of Management Analytics at Queen’s University. He specializes on the application of operations research and data analytics for assisting policy makers in the public sector. His primary areas of research are socially responsible supply chains and healthcare analytics. In the area of healthcare, he focuses on preventive, primary, emergency, acute and chronic care processes, as well as their interaction. His earlier work focused on service chain design and hazardous materials logistics. Professor Verter’s work in these four areas culminated to 80+ research articles in refereed journals and 20 book chapters. His research is well recognized through invited presentations around the globe.

Professor Verter was Editor-in-Chief of Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, an international journal focusing on public sector decision making for ten years starting 2011. Currently, he is a Senior Editor for the Healthcare Management Departments in Production and Operations Management journal. He was President of INFORMS Health Applications in 2013 and served as Founding President of College of Healthcare Management in POMS. He is deeply invested in training scholars of the future, having supervised 18 Ph.D. students and 25 post-doctoral fellows to date.