From Classification to Precision: Building a Framework for Precision Psychiatry in Bipolar Disorder

Abstract

This lecture presents a forward-looking vision for the future of medicine, using bipolar disorder as a model to illustrate how psychiatry, and healthcare more broadly, can be transformed through the principles of precision medicine. It introduces a framework that integrates ontological systems, digital phenotyping, and the discovery of clinical signatures to move beyond traditional diagnostic categories toward individualized, data-driven care. Through international collaborations and longitudinal studies, the talk demonstrates how structured phenotypic data, mobile and speech-based technologies, and genomic insights can converge to support early detection, predictive modeling, and personalized intervention. This integrative approach exemplifies how a translational infrastructure combines discovery science with clinical delivery at the vanguard of global health innovation. 

About the Speaker

Prof. Melvin McINNIS is Thomas B. and Nancy Upjohn Woodworth Professor of Bipolar Disorder and Depression, and the Director of the Heinz C. Prechter Bipolar Research Program in University of Michigan. He trained at the University of Iceland (MD 1983) and Kings College London (Psychiatry qualifications 1989) and Johns Hopkins University (Fellowship in medical and psychiatric genetics, 1993). He became an Assistant Professor and an Associate Professor of Psychiatry in the School of Medicine of Johns Hopkins University in 1993 and 1997 respectively before joining the University of Michigan in 2004.

Prof. McInnis' research and career centers around translational research in bipolar disorders. This includes predictive modelling of outcomes patterns in longitudinal data, the study of mechanisms of the disease process, and the development of an ontology around which clinical and research data can be structured and harmonized under a common data model.

He was recognized by the National Alliance for Mentally Illness (USA) with the 2018 Scientific Research Prize; he was elected fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatry (UK) in 2007 and the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology in 2017. 

For Attendees' Attention

Seating is on a first come, first served basis.