SINGAPORE: In a Southeast Asian first, Singapore researchers are embarking on a promising approach to combat treatment-resistant depression.
Both clinical trials will run concurrently from March 2024 to 2026. The trials will only recruit individuals who have exhausted conventional treatment options, such as psychiatric treatment for major depressive disorder, and failed to achieve remission. The Singapore pilots will pair IMH’s clinical expertise in standard TMS with NUS Medicine’s expertise in brain MRI to personalise a treatment plan for each participant, study its efficacy and recommend implementing this as a mainstream treatment.
“By using this newly-developed machine-learning algorithm to clearly outline high-quality individualised brain networks from the limited quantity of functional MRI data, we are able to locate the exact spot unique to each patient, and stimulate it to treat their depression disorder as accurately as possible,” mentioned Assoc Prof, who is also a co-Principal Investigator for both the clinical trials.