Defense Health Agency to Utilize AI, Data Analytics to Enhance PTSD Treatment

The US Defense Health Agency (DHA) has announced that its PTSD Drug Treatment (PTSD-DT) Program will utilize New York-based artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics company AiCure’s medication adherence and digital biomarker solutions to evaluate the efficacy of multiple PTSD treatments in service members and veterans.

Estimates of PTSD prevalence vary, but the US Department of Veterans Affairs’ National Center for PTSD reports that the National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R), conducted between February 2001 and April 2003, found that the lifetime prevalence of PTSD among adult Americans was 6.8 percent. Lifetime prevalence of PTSD was estimated to be 3.6 percent among men and 9.7 among women.

PTSD prevalence is higher in veterans than in the general population, with some variance depending on the veteran cohort. For example, the estimated lifetime prevalence of PTSD among Gulf War veterans is between 10.1 and 12.1 percent, compared to an estimated lifetime prevalence of 13.8 percent for those deployed during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to the report.

Because PTSD has a wide range of symptoms and comorbidities, the DHA will use AiCure’s solutions in its PTSD adaptive platform trial (APT). The trial aims to develop a precision medicine approach to prescribing the most effective therapy based on a patient's unique biological and clinical characteristics. The trial is also designed to help maintain troop readiness and inform the development of future PTSD therapies.

According to the press release, there are currently only two Food and Drug Administration-approved PTSD therapies, which severely limits treatment options and patient care. To advance these options, the PTSD-DT Program's APT will evaluate the effectiveness of new therapies to combat PTSD symptoms over the course of 12 weeks using AiCure’s medication adherence platform and digital biomarker solution.

The medication adherence platform will provide support to ensure correct drug dosing and medication compliance, while the biomarker solution will remotely capture audio and video data to detect changes in factors like emotional expressivity, physical movement, and speech patterns, which can provide insights into patient response to treatment.

By aggregating and analyzing this data, the collaboration aims to identify the right drug for the right patient and allow clinicians to intervene in a patient's treatment plan in a timely manner if the drug is not likely to be effective.

"PTSD has plagued our service members for decades, and yet, available drug treatments are not as effective as we would like them to be. There's an urgent need to improve unit readiness and lessen its detrimental impacts on our service members with PTSD, and developing targeted treatments will address this need," said Kimberly del Carmen, PhD, product manager at the U.S. Army Medical Materiel Development Activity (USAMMDA) and manager of the PTSD-DT Program, in the press release. "AiCure is a critical partner in this study as we aim to unlock the key to precision medicine in PTSD, understanding the nuances of a patient's behavior, and in the future giving us the insights to proactively course-correct as needed."