M-RIC Review of 2024 What is M-RIC?
The Mental Health Research for Innovation Centre (M-RIC) was established in 2023 as a result of a partnership between Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Liverpool.
How are we funded?
M-RIC is funded by the Office for Life Sciences and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Mental Health Translational Research Collaboration, hosted by the NIHR Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre.
We are proud to be a key demonstrator site in the Mental Health Mission (MHM) which aims to increase capacity in mental health research through providing relevant training and creating better systems to support industry and academic led research and investment across the UK. Specific focus is paid to addressing both areas of unmet need and high burden of mental illness.
What does our research cover?
Our research covers six areas or work packages:
M-RIC access to data
This involves combining data and analytics to support discovery science, clinical trials, and improvements in mental health services.
Mental health avatar
An interactive digital twin of a person that brings health records to life and captures new data about lifestyle, sleep patterns and other information to help people to self-care and to interact with care services.
Mood disorder care innovations
We will offer new clinics and trial novel therapies for mood disorders. This includes new medicines, talking therapies and neuromodulation technologies to treat depression including for people where existing treatments have not helped.
Child and adolescent digital mental health
A series of new mental wellbeing apps, smart games and parenting support services that lower the barrier to identifying mental health problems early.
Neuroimmune therapeutics for psychosis
Research into new uses for existing medicines that might provide new ways to treat psychosis, particularly where those medicines can support the immune system in ways that reduce brain inflammation.
Population mental health
We will work with service users and partners across the health and care system to gain their valuable insight and combine this with vital data and information to understand how we can make improvements in mental healthcare.
We believe that people who have lived experience of using mental healthcare services should play a vital role in guiding our research.
That’s why we have recruited local service users and carers to join our research teams and work collaboratively alongside our academic researchers, NHS healthcare professionals and industry experts. Together they are planning and developing meaningful research that improves mental healthcare treatments and services.
We also have a wider network of public advisors which includes service users, carers, third sector representatives and interested members of the public who support M-RIC by contributing their insights and ideas at various workshops, events and projects.
Partnerships with stakeholders and industry are vital to M-RIC’s success.
By establishing and developing partnerships with industry, it can help us access and develop timely and effective innovations such as digital technology and artificial intelligence to improve patient care.
We have been busy working with small and medium-sized enterprises and commercial partners on a wide range of projects including:
- ambient sensing for safety and phenotyping in inpatient care
- working with a design and engineering firm to launch an innovative pilot study aimed at improving the health and wellbeing of NHS staff through a new app
- integrating and making patient electronic health records more accessible and usable for clinicians
- novel digital biomarkers from smart devices focussing on eating disorders.
We also value partnerships with community organisations, charities, public health, and others which are helping us to reach wider audiences, so we engage with people that truly represent our communities. They also help us develop research to understand the social determinants or non-medical factors that can impact mental health.
We hope M-RIC will provide a path for change and a blueprint for developing similar centres across the UK.
M-RIC Review of 2024
Learn more about our progress and highlights over the past 12 months by visiting other sections in our 2024 Annual Review.