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# Data-Driven Psychiatry ‘Possible’: Study
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/data-driven-psychiatry-possible-study/
- Published: 2018-08-27T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-15T00:28:17.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: FDA Policy/General, #legacy-id-D5142202

Former FDA commissioner **Robert Califf** and researchers at Verily Life Sciences, a company developing digital measurement tools, say they believe that data-driven psychiatry is possible and that digital measurement tools and analytics, as “objective yardsticks,” can help bring that future about. [Writing](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-018-0046-0.pdf?ref=fdaweb.com) online in *npj Digital Medicine*, the researchers say that with appropriate attention to real world clinical outcomes, data science, patient experience, and the role of clinical judgment with respect to standard of care, “psychiatric practice can leapfrog into a modern era already occupied by other medical fields. For the sake of future patients, there is no better time for this investment than today.”

The article notes that psychiatry has been limited by historically rooted practices centered primarily on subjective observation. The researchers say that other fields such as oncology have progressed toward data-driven clinical decision-making combining subjective clinical assessment of symptoms and preferences with biological measures such as genetics, biomarkers, imaging, and integrative physiology to derive quantitative risk scores and decision support. “An opportunity exists to improve modern psychiatric care with novel data streams from digital sensors combined with clinical observation and subjective self-report.”