MQ Mental Health Data Science meetings provide a forum for the mental health data science community to share findings and best practice.

About this event

We are collaborating with HDR UK's hub - DATAMIND - who are working to enable researchers and others to find and use the UK's rich datasets and health records for mental health research.

You can read the full event agenda here.

What do we mean by Data Science?

Data Science can refer to using existing administrative or healthcare datasets, or linking of datasets, for research. It can also involve novel analytic approaches to complex datasets, such as those combining expertise from statistics and/or computing science.

With talks from:

Professor Andrew McIntosh - Chair of Biological Psychiatry, University of Edinburgh

Andrew McIntosh is a Professor of Psychiatry at the Division of Psychiatry, Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences and a member of the MQ Science Council.

Professor Honghan Wu - Professor of Health Informatics and AI at the School of Health and Wellbeing, University of Glasgow

Honghan Wu is a co-director of Health Data Research UK Scotland and a former Turing Fellow. Professor Wu’s research focuses on the machine learning, natural language processing, knowledge graph and their applications in medicine. He works closely with NHS Trusts and health boards across the UK on applying AI technologies in facilitating care and research.

Talk title: Predicting anxiety and depression in people with type 2 diabetes: deep learning approaches on multimodal regional health records in China

Dr Elizabeth Ford - Associate Professor in Health Data Science, Brighton and Sussex Medical School

Elizabeth Ford is Associate Professor in Health Data Science at Brighton and Sussex Medical, Lead for Data Science in the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration in Kent, Surrey, and Sussex, and research consultant for the Kent, Medway and Sussex NHS Secure Data Environment. After studying psychology and psychiatric epidemiology, Elizabeth has developed extensive experience analysing primary care and mental health patient data, coupled with work on public engagement and understanding health data governance risks and solutions. She has led projects developing risk prediction and early disease detection models in mental health and dementia. Her current work explores health inequalities using linked patient data and develops ethical frameworks for embedding AI in research and clinical practice.

Talk title: When code meets compassion: Navigating ethical issues in data-driven mental health care innovation

Plus presentations from early career researchers.

Panel discussion:

Stakeholders' Perspectives on Challenges and Opportunities in NLP.

Panelists include:

Angus Roberts

Dr. Angus Roberts is a Senior Lecturer in Health Informatics at King’s College London. Angus has a background as a Biomedical Scientist in the NHS and transitioned into computer science, working as an NHS software developer. His interest in electronic health records led him to complete a PhD in Natural Language Processing (NLP) at the University of Sheffield. He has a particular interest in the text of mental health records, having led the team that built the first NLP applications for the NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre's CRIS mental health dataset in 2010. This has become the UK's largest clinical NLP project, in which Angus continues to play a leading role.

Jan Speechley

Jan Speechley has held a variety of roles as an expert by lived experience, inclusing a Public Co Applicant for DATAMIND 2 and as a LEE reviewer for MQ Mental Health Research Fellowships.

Jan is committed to elevating the PPI role in health research and empowering patients and the public to understand and engage within it. I am particularly interested in developing the relationships between researchers and PPI members, sharing knowledge, training and removing the barriers to learning.

Elizabeth Ford

See above

Honghan Wu

See above

Jayesh Shah

Details to follow

Brendan Delaney

Details to follow

Dermot O’Reilly Memorial Prize

To continue to honour the scientific contributions of our former colleague, Dermot O’Reilly, the ‘Dermot O’Reilly Memorial Prize’ for the most innovative science, and engaging, presentation from an Early Career Researcher will now be awarded at our Data Science events.

Attend both the Data Science meeting and the ECR workshop and get a discount on your ticket!

Once you have purchased a ticket for the meeting you will receive a discount code which you can use to book your discounted ticket for the MQ Data Science workshop which is the following day.

Lunch will be provided. If you have any dietary requirements please let us know in advance.

Please note, you may be asked to present ID on entry to the venue. We recommend you bring photographic ID with you on the day.

MQ and DATAMIND's Data Science meeting May 2025