Netramark, CAMH win Ontario research award

Executive Summary

• Netramark Holdings Inc. and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) have been awarded the Ontario Research Fund -- Research Excellence (ORF-RE) Award.
• The collaboration involves deploying Netramark’s NetraAI platform within CAMH’s secure high-performance computing environment to analyze genetic and epigenetic data related to schizophrenia and major depressive disorder.
• The initiative aims to identify explainable patient subpopulations to support precision treatment strategies and enhance NetraAI’s capabilities for pharmaceutical sponsors to improve clinical trial outcomes.

Key Details

• Award Details: Recipients of the Ontario Research Fund -- Research Excellence (ORF-RE) Award, recognizing innovative partnerships driving research excellence and technological advancement in Ontario.
• Technology Deployment: NetraAI, Netramark's mathematically augmented machine learning platform, will be installed on CAMH's research cluster with on-site support from Netramark.
• Data Analysis Scope:
  • Analysis of genetic and epigenetic data from schizophrenia and major depressive disorder studies.
  • Use of deidentified patient data to ensure adherence to CAMH's data privacy and network security standards.
  • Evaluation of an additional "bonus data set" of Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) administrative data for cost-effectiveness analyses and broader health system impact exploration.
• Strategic Objectives:
  • Identify explainable patient subpopulations to clarify biological subtypes in psychiatric disorders.
  • Support next-generation precision treatment strategies.
  • Enhance NetraAI capabilities to serve pharmaceutical sponsors in the psychiatric space to improve clinical trial outcomes.
• Technical Approach: NetraAI uses focus mechanisms to separate small data sets into explainable and unexplainable subsets, aiming to prevent overfitting and derive accurate insights into treatment responses, placebo responses, and adverse events.

Notable Quotes

• Dr. James Kennedy, Head of the Tanenbaum Centre for Pharmacogenetics at CAMH: "This collaboration integrates Netramark's unique AI approach with CAMH's deep genomic and clinical data sets to explore how genetic and epigenetic patterns influence treatment response. The insights generated will advance our understanding of the genes that alter a patient's response to psychiatric medication. This will enable physicians to personalize treatment for each individual patient living with complex mental health illnesses such as schizophrenia or depression."
• Dr. Joseph Geraci, Founder and Chief Scientific and Technology Officer of Netramark: "It makes me proud to have my work recognized through this award and to collaborate with CAMH, an internationally recognized institute for its leadership in psychiatric research. Combining their data sets with NetraAI's unique explainable AI framework allows us to uncover biologically grounded subpopulations that have previously eluded traditional analytics. We believe this work will contribute to next-generation precision medicine approaches for mental health and to also improve clinical trial outcomes."