NIMH Director Insel Headed To Google Life Sciences
Dr. Thomas Insel, current director of the National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH), announced that he will step down in November to join the healthcare arm of the newly formed Alphabet, Google Life Sciences (GLS). The announcement follows a summer-long tour of research facilities at some of the health tech industry’s largest players, where Insel expressed interest in the untapped potential of data technology in mental healthcare.
Insel has spent the last 13 years as director of NIMH, where he’s played a leading role in facilitating autism research, studying the role of genetics in mental disorders, and creating practical clinical trials. Before accepting the position of director, Insel was a professor of psychiatry at Emory University, where he founded the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience and directed the NIH-funded Center for Autism Research.
The New York Times (NYT) reported that Insel’s absence will leave a void at NIMH that will not be easy to fill, especially in the wake of the Obama administration’s Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative. Scientists at NIMH told NYT that the government is losing a world-class brain science expert and a shrewd administrator.
“Tom’s leaving is a great loss for all of us,” said E. Fuller Torrey, executive director of the Stanley Medical Research Institute, to NYT. “He refocused NIMH on its primary mission — research on the causes and better treatments for individuals with serious mental illness.”
Historically, funding for mental health research in the U.S. has been dominated by pharmaceutical companies and the NIH but, according to Insel, some of today’s biggest investors are tech companies. Following a summer tour of IBM and Apple — some of the biggest names in technology who’ve recently begun to invest heavily in healthcare — Insel blogged about his experience and what he’d discovered.
“As genomics, imaging, and large healthcare studies generate terabytes of data daily,” wrote Insel, “companies that know how to extract knowledge from data have become essential partners for progress towards new diagnostics and therapeutics.”
Insel concluded that innovations in healthcare apps, which have until recently focused primarily on cardiovascular and diabetes management, could easily be directed toward developing interventions for patients with mental health disorders. Care that is closed-loop and immediate is particularly advantageous for patients experiencing a crisis.
“Population-based studies have shown that less than half of people with mental illness seek care,” said Insel, adding that making intervention a point-and-click away may increase the likelihood of patients reaching out.
In the interview with NYT, Insel remarked that the average duration of untreated psychosis was approximately 74 weeks. “I think it’s not unreasonable, with data analytics — Google’s sweet spot — to get that number down to seven weeks by 2020.”
In a statement published by Forbes, Insel said he is looking forward to working with the GLS team to see how their mission to find innovative diagnostics and management technology solutions can be applied to the treatment of mental health disorders.
In a statement, NIH director Francis Collins said he anticipated a bright future for Insel at GLS. “In terms of Tom’s future, he is definitely not retiring.”