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Contexts and Confounders in Clinical Practice, in parables, and as a Path to novel drug discovery
Most clinical insights are based on static measures and aggregate insights. We are interested in the dynamic changes able to be tracked by smartphone wearables – “personal digital health technologies”. The more we focus at the n=one level the more awkward it seems to assume at a priori information should be borrowed directly from others. The talk will review past efforts on steps and pregnancy, current efforts on Bipolar disease with UK Bipolar, and emerging efforts on forecasting frailty using dynamic resilience. the last part of the lecture will discuss how rare clinical outliers can point the path to discovering new therapies.
Bio:
Dr.Friend is an authority in the fields of genetic resilience, cancer biology, and digital health. At Dana Farber and MIT his team cloned the first human cancer susceptibility gene. While on the Faculty of Harvard his lab went on to identify that P53 mutations drive the tumours in LFS. He c-founded “Rosetta Impharmatics” where they developed the RNA expression approaches to assess the aggressiveness of great cancers now used across the world. Merck acquired Rosetta and as SVP for Oncology Stephen rebuilt the cancer franchise. After working at Apple from 2014-2017 on digital health, he is now a co-founder of 4YouandMe, and based Oxford. Stephen now works on using smartphones and wearables to more accurately follow conditions, understand the role of stress, and evolve ways for wearables to be part of early tumor detection. his newest project involves going back to his roots in drug discovery to find novel ways of identifying targets for rare genetic diseases.
This seminar is hosted in person at the Department of Psychiatry, and via Zoom. To join online, please use the Zoom link below:
zoom.us/j/94567124781?pwd=sVxXabbSWibdU8A9W2clQlG9neRGbQ.1
Meeting ID: 945 6712 4781
Passcode: 470970
Date:
18 November 2025, 10:30
Venue:
Department of Psychiatry, Headington OX3 7JX
Venue Details:
Seminar Room
Speaker:
Professor Stephen Friend (University of Oxford / 4YouandMe.org)
Organising department:
Department of Psychiatry
Organiser:
Professor Andrea Cipriani (University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address:
rania.elgarf@psych.ox.ac.uk
Host:
Professor Andrea Cipriani (University of Oxford)
Part of:
Psychiatry Seminar Series
Booking required?:
Not required
Audience:
Public
Editor:
Rania Elgarf
