Associate Professor Jimmy Lee Chee Keong
Psychiatrist & Senior Consultant, Institute of Mental Health (IMH)
Associate Professor, Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine (LKCMedicine), NTU Singapore
Associate Prof Jimmy Lee is revolutionizing mental healthcare with an unlikely ally: data. But this isn’t just about numbers – it’s about transforming how we understand and treat mental health conditions.
As a psychiatrist and clinician scientist, A/Prof Lee’s journey began in the clinics during his early years as a junior doctor. There, he witnessed firsthand a challenging reality: despite best medical efforts, some patients experienced relapses, functional decline and treatment resistance, profoundly impacting both the patients and their caregivers.
This reality sparked his research mission: to improve outcomes for people with serious mental health conditions through precision medicine and digital innovation. Today, his pioneering approaches are making waves across Asia.
At the heart of his adventure is Project HOPES (Health Outcomes Through Positive Engagement and Self-Empowerment), one of Asia’s first platforms using real-time digital phenotyping in psychiatry. The platform empowers users by providing access to their health data, using digital markers like speech patterns and motor movement to guide self-management and trigger timely clinical responses. This marks a crucial shift from reactive to preventive mental healthcare, with pilot data already showing promising results in patient engagement and predictive potential.
His work extends further into precision psychiatry, where he leads efforts to develop individualized risk scores for treatment response in schizophrenia. By analysing both genetic and non-genetic factors, his work predicts how patients might respond to antipsychotics, potentially identifying treatment non-responders earlier and enabling more targeted interventions.
Through the Phenomics research program he leads under the National Medical Research Council (NMRC) Centre Grant, A/Prof Lee has established research infrastructure supporting large-scale phenotyping across clinical, cognitive, digital, and biological domains. His team tracks diverse patient groups over time in natural care settings, building a more complete picture of how mental illnesses evolve in real-world conditions.
“These clinical realities shaped my research goal: improving outcomes for people with serious mental health conditions. My work is motivated by the opportunity to enhance predictive accuracy, personalise treatment and reduce the illness burden on patients, families and the healthcare system.”
The impact of his work extends beyond individual patients, strengthening the evidence base for data-driven mental healthcare and influencing both clinical workflows and national mental health strategy. Looking ahead, he envisions a future where multiple data sources guide care delivery, opening new frontiers in medicine. His vision encompasses a blended model of care, where data drives precision medicine and physicians work collaboratively with patients to personalise interventions.
