Combining Psychiatry with Computer Science

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Life is becoming routine and I'm getting bored. I've been thinking about learning computer science but I'm not sure if this is a good use of my time. Do you know any psychiatrist (or non-psychiatric physician) who combined his or her specialty with computer science? If so, what was the result of the combination? Any interesting projects or accomplishments?

 

[dl2dp2]

This is an active area, both in applied work and also in more basic research, and branches into various efforts funded by lots of different groups. Just in computer science, there are various branches that crosstalk with various branches of psychiatry (i.e. data structures/informatics vs. human-computer interface vs. machine learning --> OCD/depression/SUD/genetics/pharmacology, etc.). Each domain topic is deep, and there is a broad portfolio of the type of careers that are possible, spanning from federally funded academic research careers to CMIO at large tech companies and provider organizations. Your question, therefore, is too broad to give a more specific answer.

 

[psychacad]

Machine learning and data analysis are all the rage right now. Even "computational psychiatry" (a bogus name imo; it's not more than applications of modeling/computational neuroscience to neuroscience pertaining to mental health) is trending.

So yes, there's plenty of work in that area and actually active encouragement with increasing funding resources from the NIMH. This spans more clinically oriented research (i.e diagnostic classifications, biomarkers, treatment response) to translational research (BMI, neural engineering) to more basic questions (the "neural code"..etc).

It's a very exciting time if you're into that field, and seems the only way forward to understand anything about the brain. There's a lot of hope that AI, learning algorithms can change medicine in general, and not just psychiatry.