Welcome to GENET, a novel international research collaboration for the standardized longitudinal collection and sharing of ECT treatment data and associated biosignals.

Even though eighty years of ECT related research have greatly advanced our understanding, research is often challenged by the clinical heterogeneity of different syndroms treated with ECT, small sample sizes, limited characterization of samples, missing follow-up measures and locally restricted differences in delivery practices. These factors are known to obstruct large-scale retro- and prospective investigations of the basic treatment variables caused by inefficient data collection procedures and the inability to export multi-dimensional longitudinal data structures including EEG, ECG, or EMG related biosignals into patient-level databases.

To address these issues, with GENET we focus on the standardized collection and collaborative analysis of longitudinal ECT treatment data. GENET uses GPD (Elektrika Inc^®), a documentation tool further evolved from the Genie software. GPD allows to collect treatment and seizure parameters over the ECT course of each patient. GPD automatically integrates all output data from Thymatron IV plus additional clinical variables on a patient-based manner. GPD usage is free to everyone, but we would appreciate if you joined GENET and acknowledged it in your paper.

By joining GENET and sharing your ECT treatment parameters you get access to a huge and highly standardized data collection at a pseudonymized level. GENET is primarily built for Thymatron IV treatment data, but we are keen to find possibilities to integrate data from other ECT treatment devices.

We believe that the standardized collection and sharing of ECT treatment data and associated biosignals will increase the quality of the ECT documentation and will therefore contribute to the evidence based optimization of the ECT-treatment.