Patients with severe mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, often require long-term use of antipsychotic medications. Some of these drugs, however, can pose potential risks, such as elevated prolactin levels and compromised immune function. Previous studies have relied mostly on small or single-centre data, making it difficult to accurately assess the true incidence of rare adverse effects. Researchers from the LKS Faculty of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong (HKUMed), through multidisciplinary collaboration and rigorous epidemiological methods, leveraged territory-wide data from the Hospital Authority to conduct two internationally impactful studies. The findings were published in leading psychiatric journals World Psychiatry and The Lancet Psychiatry. These discoveries provide solid evidence for drug regulation and clinical practice and establish Hong Kong as a global leader in big data research on psychiatric medication safety.

A clinical oncology research team at the LKS Faculty of Medicine, the University of Hong Kong (HKUMed), in collaboration with the US National Cancer Institute (NCI), has developed an innovative big data platform, called the ‘Cancer Immunology Data Engine’ (CIDE). This state-of-the-art platform integrates clinical outcomes from 5,957 cancer patients worldwide who received immunotherapy, along with comprehensive multi-omics datasets covering 17 cancer types and comprising 8,575 tumour samples. CIDE represents the most extensive database for tumour immunotherapy available to date. Currently publicly accessible via the NCI website (https://cide.ccr.cancer.gov/), the platform enables researchers worldwide to explore and analyse clinical trial data in depth, thereby accelerating advances in cancer immunotherapy research.

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