About Us - Ethics of Deep Phenotyping

About

Founded in 1811, McLean Hospital is a leader in psychiatric care, research and education, and is the largest psychiatric teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. In 2016, McLean launched the Institute for Technology in Psychiatry, which harnesses the enthusiasm for technologies such as smartphones, wearable devices, and tablets to bring more personalized and accessible behavioral and mental health care to individuals globally and advance psychiatric research.

Our work centers around an ongoing, interdisciplinary embedded neuroethics research project launched by an NIH Bioethics Administrative Supplement award. Our team of co-authors includes psychiatrist Benjamin Silverman, MD (Mass General Brigham/HMS), psychiatrist Scott Rauch, MD (McLean/HMS), psychiatrist and neuroscientist Justin Baker, MD, PhD (McLean Hospital/HMS), and legal and ethics scholar Francis Shen, JD, PhD (Harvard MGH/HMS). We also include two student co-authors who have contributed meaningfully to the research. The parent project to the bioethics supplement is Dr. Rauch and Dr. Baker’s U01 MH116925 grant, exploring Robust Predictors of Mania and Psychosis.

Consistent with recent Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications analyses, the bottom line of our neuroethics analysis is that existing ethical guidance and legal regulation are not sufficient for deep phenotyping research. At present, there are regulatory gaps, inconsistency across research teams in ethics protocols, and a lack of consensus amongst IRBs in when and how deep phenotyping research should proceed. Our group strives to work towards filling some of these gaps by encouraging the careful design and execution of research.