Comprehensive Summary
This review article examines the role of ontologies, which are structured frameworks that define concepts and their relationships in advancing psychiatric research and clinical care. While ontologies have been widely adopted across biomedical sciences, psychiatry has largely relied on taxonomic classification systems like the DSM and ICD, which lack the semantic structure and computational properties needed for integration with modern data analytics. The authors highlight how this reliance limits the ability to unify and analyze heterogeneous psychiatric data, particularly in conditions such as bipolar disorder, where variability in symptoms complicates diagnosis and treatment. By contrast, ontologies such as the Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO) provide standardized, machine-readable vocabularies that allow integration of multimodal data, from clinical notes to genomic and imaging results. The paper reviews emerging efforts, such as the Global Bipolar Cohort initiative, which seeks to expand the HPO with curated psychiatric terms, definitions, and mappings. The discussion emphasizes the paradigm shift toward ontology-based infrastructures to support reproducible research, data interoperability, and computational reasoning in psychiatry.
Outcomes and Implications
The authors argue that ontology-driven approaches are essential for enabling precision psychiatry and overcoming the limitations of current classification frameworks. For clinicians, this shift promises more consistent diagnostic practices, better integration of biological and psychosocial data, and the ability to use AI tools for decision support and individualized care. In practice, ontologies could reduce diagnostic inconsistencies, improve data reuse, and unlock “dark data” in electronic health records by structuring unstandardized information into computable formats. While widespread clinical adoption will require significant collaborative effort and refinement, particularly in mapping subjective psychiatric phenomena, the groundwork is already being laid through projects like HPO and the Global Bipolar Cohort. In the near future, these efforts could support more accurate diagnosis, tailored treatment strategies, and large-scale research into complex psychiatric conditions.