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PERSONAL Trial

Personalised Selection of Medication for Newly Diagnosed Adult Epilepsy (PERSONAL) Trial

The PERSONAL Trial is crucial for improving future epilepsy care.

Finding the right antiseizure medication (ASM) can be a challenging journey. What if we could anticipate how a person will respond to medication before even starting it?

The PERSONAL Trial is a randomised controlled trial (RCT) designed to examine the effectiveness of an artificial intelligence (AI) tool compared with usual clinical practice for selecting a person's first antiseizure medication (ASM).

The trial will continue the development of a potential tool that can predict a person's response to ASM and how well the ASM will work, so physicians can prescribe the most effective treatment to optimise patient outcomes.

About the PERSONAL trial

The PERSONAL Trial is led by Monash University in Australia and is funded by NHMRC Clinical Trials and Cohort Studies.
The project has been approved by the Alfred Hospital Ethics Committee (Project Number: 94107).

Detailed information about the trial can be found at the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry.

What’s does taking part involve?

People with newly diagnosed epilepsy may be invited to take part in this study. The study takes place over 12 months, starting with a baseline visit followed by 5 follow-up appointments.

At the baseline visit, participants are randomly allocated into one of two study groups and receive their initial ASM prescription. Throughout the study, participants complete questionnaires and assessments about their ongoing health and quality of life and maintain a seizure and healthcare-use diary.

Baseline visit - Participants are randomised to one of two study groups, receive their initial ASM prescription and complete questionnaires and assessments.

Follow-up appointments - Over the 12-month study period, participants attend 5 follow-up appointments and complete questionnaires and assessments about their ongoing health and quality of life.

*This is a blinded study: Neither participants nor the doctors reviewing them during follow-up are aware of which study group the participant was allocated to.

Recruiting hospitals

The Alfred Hospital
The Royal Melbourne Hospital
Austin Hospital
Box Hill Hospital
Monash Medical Centre
Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital
Royal Perth Hospital
Royal Adelaide Hospital
Royal Northshore Hospital

Get involved

If you’re interested to learn more about the PERSONAL Trial, please consult your neurologist. Enrolment in the study takes place after a referral from a specialist at one of our recruiting hospitals.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

When a patient is newly diagnosed with epilepsy, the usual practice is to start a single ASM. If the initial ASM does not control seizures or causes side effects, another ASM or combined therapy will be recommended until seizure freedom is achieved. This trial-and-error approach can be a lengthy process that can take years and impact a patient’s quality of life before finding the most suitable ASM.
Our research findings suggest that patients can achieve seizure freedom sooner if they are prescribed the appropriate ASM from the start. When a clinician is prescribing a medication, they are relying on their own knowledge and experience from treating previous cases. In comparison, our AI tool is developed using information from thousands of cases treated by many clinicians to explore the hidden relationships between a person’s clinical history and their future ASM response.
The procedures of the PERSONAL Trial are designed to ensure that any information collected from participants is done so securely and in a way that protects their identity. The consent form has opt-in questions that provide an opportunity for participants to dictate how information they provide for the study is used in the future. Only members of the study team that have been approved by the ethics committee have access to the information collected.
The primary goal of the PERSONAL Trial is to determine how effective our AI model is by comparing the outcomes of those who have had their medication selected with AI assistance to the outcomes of those who have not. Once the trial is complete, we will compare these two groups in terms of a variety of outcomes such as seizure freedom, changes to quality of life and general health. If we can prove the model is effective and safe to use, this would be another step towards integrating the model with standard clinical practice in epilepsy centres around Australia. Ultimately, our goal is to take the guesswork out of finding the right medication from the beginning of the epilepsy treatment journey.

Contact us

If you have any questions or need further assistance, please reach out to our Study Coordinator via email at daniel.thom@monash.edu or over the phone at 0450807412.

Publications

Personalised selection of medication for newly diagnosed adult epilepsy: study protocol of a first-in-class, double-blind, randomised controlled trial. BMJ Open Apr 2025. D Thom, R S-K Chang, N A Lannin, Z Ademi, Z Ge, D Reutens, T O'Brien, W D'Souza, P Perucca, S Reeder , A Nikpour, C Wong, M Kiley, J-L Saw, J-P Nicolo, U Seneviratne, P Carney, D Jones, E Somerville, C Stapleton, E Foster, L Vadlamudi, D N Vaughan, J Lee, T Farrar, M Howard, R Sparrow, Z Chen, P Kwan

Department of Neuroscience

Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences