In an effort to improve diagnosis, treatment and monitoring for mental health patients, researchers have developed a smartphone application that detects changes in patients’ behavioral patterns and transmits them to medical professionals in real time. PsychCentral reports on researchers' findings showing the app can provide useful insights to health-care providers about patients' daily activity and mood:
Researchers conducted two clinical trials in which the application was installed on the smartphones of 20 patients suffering from bipolar, unipolar/depressive, or schizoaffective disorders, as well as on the phones of 20 healthy participants.
Over the course of six months, the app acquired data from patients’ phones and sent the information to distant computers, where advanced algorithms analyzed the data to detect changes in patients’ sleep, communication, mobility, and vocal patterns.
The researchers further developed a visualization system that displayed the summarized information to psychiatrists, providing them with instant insight into the behavioral trends of their patients.
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Psychiatrists in the trials reported that the system has already positively affected their interaction with patients, offering a useful objective “window” into the patient’s daily routine.
Patients have full control over who is allowed to access the app and information it collects. The system does not acquire or record the content of calls or texts and any identifying parameters of the patient or of his contacts are irreversibly masked and are obviously not used, according to a release.
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