Monitoring Mental Health with a Smartphone Application

Severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, major depression or bipolar disorder are a leading cause of hospital admissions. Although mental health deterioration is not momentary but takes weeks, in the US alone 40% of the 2 million annual hospitalizations are readmissions.

The goal of this project was to design a system to aid the need in continuous quantified monitoring of mental health in chronic patients. We developed a system for continuous monitoring of behavioral deterioration that is based on passive collection of data from patients' smartphones. Statistical algorithms are continuously applied over the data and the patient’s day-to-day behavior and an alert log are then presented in an intuitive dashboard to care providers. The system was tested in a study performed with the Geha Mental Health Center with 50 patients, each studied for a period of at least 6 months. The system enables early detection of deterioration in mental health patients 2-4 weeks before an oncoming episode arises, proving a potential use for maintaining health of mental health patients and reducing hospitalizations.