Season 3 Episode 6: Why Daily Data Beats Annual Screening for MDD

Andie Morataya

Hello and welcome to the Better Living Through Data podcast! So, October eighth is National Depression Screening Day, and then right on its heels, October tenth is World Mental Health Day. And, you know, from where I sit in marketing, these observances are just incredible for creating momentum and bringing mental health into the main conversation.

Anthony Pero

You’re right Andie. These days really do create that spark, but when you look at long term care; an annual snapshot, or a once a year screening day, it just falls short. Major Depressive Disorder in older adults is notoriously slippery to catch if you are only looking once a year.

Andie Morataya

Do you say it's slippery because the symptoms look a lot like the idea of " they're just getting older?"

Anthony Pero

Exactly. You get fatigue, or a change in weight, or restlessness, or insomnia. And with sleep, its not just trouble falling asleep, it is initial, middle, or late insomnia. Care teams see those and, and they often just attribute them to normal aging or a co-occurring chronic condition, so the actual depression diagnosis gets missed for months.

Andie Morataya

Right, like if someone is waking up at three in the morning every night, late insomnia, you might think it is just a physical ailment or even possibly a medication side effect, not MDD.

Anthony Pero

Precisely. And that is why the clinical approach to tracking cognitive function shifted so significantly recently. Back in 2023, the industry moved away from MDS Section G and the old Cognitive Performance Scale, or CPS, toward BIMS, the Brief Interview for Mental Status.

Andie Morataya

The Brief Interview for Mental Status, or BIMS, gives you that objective cognitive tracking so you can actually tell MDD apart from progressive cognitive decline, right?

Anthony Pero

Yeah, exactly. Because if you don't have objective continuous tracking, you're guessing whether a resident is withdrawing because of dementia or because of a treatable depressive episode. Marketing campaigns like National Depression Screening Day get people through the door, but life sciences and clinical teams need continuous daily function data to actually guide treatment.

Andie Morataya

And that continuous daily view is really where the scale of our data comes in, right? We are looking at 5 point 2 million unique patient records with Major Depressive Disorder in the PointClickCare ecosystem.

Anthony Pero

5 point 2 million total records, and nearly five hundred sixty thousand active unique patient records with MDD right now. That is coming out of an electronic health record system that captures over 50 data points per patient per day, across more than 15 million patients aged 65 plus, with an average long stay of over 800 days.

Andie Morataya

800 days average stay! That gives you over two years of daily continuous longitudinal data on a single person.

Anthony Pero

Think about what that lets you see. In standard health data, you might just see a prescription order for an SSRI or an SNRI, and maybe a medication switch six weeks later. But here, you see the prescription switch alongside daily physiological observations, like blood pressure, weight, and appetite changes.

Andie Morataya

So you don't just see that they switched from an SSRI to an SNRI, you see that their weight dropped five pounds and their sleep disruption spiked right before the doctor made that change. That sort of thing.

Anthony Pero

Yes! And you can connect that behavioral data with biological and genetic markers. We can look at inflammatory markers like CRP, IL 6, and TNF alpha, plus thyroid panels, Vitamin D, B12, folate, and cortisol levels. You are connecting the molecular and lab signals directly to daily clinical behavior.

Andie Morataya

And what about the 'whole person' context? Like, how does social determinants of health fit into this?

Anthony Pero

Oh, yes, that is crucial. The dataset incorporates SDOH and DEI profiles, so payer status, social isolation metrics, health literacy, age, gender, marital status. As an example, When you overlay the data with comorbidities like Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, or anxiety disorders, you start to see where structural healthcare disparities actually live across different facility types.

Andie Morataya

So researchers can see if a resident with social isolation and low health literacy in a low resource facility is getting the same timely adjustments for their MDD as someone in a higher resource setting.

Anthony Pero

That is the whole power of real world evidence. As we honor these two important mental health awareness events, acknowledgement is step one. Transforming that awareness into real care requires turning daily electronic health records into continuous, measurable clinical insights.

Andie Morataya

Continuous data making mental health care a daily reality. What a great note to end on today.

Anthony Pero

If our listeners are interested in learning more about our clinical MDD dataset, you can visit the link in today's podcast description!

Andie Morataya

Thanks again for a good chat, Anthony.

Anthony Pero

Talk soon, Andie. Bye everyone! Thanks for listening!