University of Birmingham. UK: Scientists from the University of Birmingham have developed an app
that can measure the activity patterns of patients with depression and
provide the necessary support.
“MoodTraces” is a smartphone app designed to monitor and evaluate a
person’s mood and activities in real-time, allowing healthcare
officers, doctors and charity workers to intervene when behaviours
indicate a worsening depressive state.
The app will allow academics and clinicians to investigate how
mobile technology can be used to collect and analyse data to better
understand how mental health problems affect the daily routine and
behaviour of sufferers. A series of multiple choice questions asks the
user about the occurrence of depressive symptoms, while specially
designed software tracks their current location, activity and
application usage. If the data collected correlates with key indicators
of a worsening mental state, health and charity workers are able to
intervene through the mobile phone itself or more traditional methods
such as a telephone call, or arranging to meet the patient in person.
The information gathered will help build a system to monitor the
individual over time and understand any changes which would correlate
with worsening depression and to develop a programme of care which can
be given through mobile technology.
According to a recent study, one in 10 employees in the United
Kingdom has taken time off work because of depressive symptoms. Dr Mirco
Musolesi, a Reader in Networked Systems and Data Science at the
University of Birmingham’s School of Computer Science who developed the
app said: ‘The goal is to build an application that is completely
unobtrusive and privacy-preserving, which will be of real help for
people affected by depression. The application will allow health
officers, doctors, and charity workers to spot cases that need immediate
consideration and prioritise them’.
Luca Canzian, a Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham’s
School of Computer Science added: ‘Mobile technologies and real-time big
data analytics can have a huge impact on the life of thousands of
people. We are also working to develop technologies that are able to
provide automatic support to people affected by depression through their
phone.’
The data collected through MoodTraces will help researchers design
innovative applications which will pave the way for real-time
healthcare provision. The researchers are currently looking for
participants who are willing to download the MoodTraces application.
They are looking for people who are affected by clinical depression and
also members of the general public so they are able to build a
large-scale database for understanding the correlation between mobility
patterns, activities and the mood of the general population.