Nationwide Children’s Team Builds Award-Winning AI Tool to Drive Mental Health Research

DREAM project wins the 2025 Gartner Eye on Innovation Mid-Size Enterprise Award in the Americas region.

In recognition of its innovative application of technology to address critical health care challenges, the Office of Data Sciences was selected as the winner for the prestigious 2025 Gartner Eye on Innovation Awards, Mid-Size Enterprise, Americas. 

This international honor recognized the DREAM (Data Review & Evaluation Assistant for Mental Health) initiative.  

“Changing the tide for the youth mental health crisis requires faster answers to drive better outcomes through research,” says Peter White, PhD, chief data sciences officer at Nationwide Children’s. “Pediatric mental health emergencies have risen by 30% nationally since 2020. The crisis is outpacing the research — and we wanted to change that.” 

Researchers in the Institute for Mental and Behavioral Health Research at Nationwide Children’s faced overwhelming data sets of more than 67,000 variables collected from more than 700 patients over eight years. The team at the Office of Data Sciences at Nationwide Children’s wanted to help address this challenge, and the DREAM initiative was born.  

“DREAM converts weeks of work into seconds,” explains Ashley Kubatko, MS, director of data sciences strategy and operations in the Office of Data Sciences at Nationwide Children’s. “Off-the-shelf large language models haven’t been able to handle the complexity of mental health data, which is fragmented, heterogenous and dense. DREAM is built specifically to meet the challenges these data present.”  

With DREAM, researchers can ask questions in plain English. The tool then identifies the right data, generates safe, reusable code, and instantly creates visualizations — all within a secure, HIPAA-compliant AWS Cloud environment. 

Validation studies showed analyses that required more than 20 hours of expert effort could now be run in just 30 seconds, with more than 99% accuracy at baseline and 100% accuracy in longitudinal assessment.  

The team continues to enhance and expand DREAM’s, incorporating data sets for anxiety, depression, autism, suicide prevention and radiology.  

“We view DREAM as more than a technology — it’s a vital bridge from data to discovery, accelerating research, advancing care and shaping a future where vulnerable youth will receive better care because answers are available when they are needed,” says Dr. White.  

The DREAM team includes: 

• Dr. Peter White
• Dr. Eric Youngstrom
• Ashley Kubatko
• Jordan Wells
• Benjamin Knutson
• Lauren Griffith
• Meena Punniaraj