New Startup By a Trio of Doctors Uses Phone App To Collect Measures of People's Cognition and Emotional Health and Attempts To Detect Signs of Depression (technologyreview.com)

A startup founded in Palo Alto, California, by a trio of doctors, including the former director of the US National Institute of Mental Health, is trying to prove that our obsession with the technology in our pockets can help treat some of today's most intractable medical problems: depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and substance abuse. MIT Technology Review: Mindstrong Health is using a smartphone app to collect measures of people's cognition and emotional health as indicated by how they use their phones. Once a patient installs Mindstrong's app, it monitors things like the way the person types, taps, and scrolls while using other apps. This data is encrypted and analyzed remotely using machine learning, and the results are shared with the patient and the patient's medical provider.

The seemingly mundane minutiae of how you interact with your phone offers surprisingly important clues to your mental health, according to Mindstrong's research -- revealing, for example, a relapse of depression. With details gleaned from the app, Mindstrong says, a patient's doctor or other care manager gets an alert when something may be amiss and can then check in with the patient by sending a message through the app (patients, too, can use it to message their care provider).

Comments

Just what depressives need

[stealth_finger]

Just what depressives need, a disconnected app experience. People need to get used to the idea an app isn't the be all and end all of solutions to problems. Seems like a cover to slurp up data if you ask me, not that anyone did.

Re:Consequences?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been looking out for the proposal to just ban people from voting. When the DNC loses elections they go batshit crazy.
Lost to Regan - Bush flew on SR-71!
Lost to Bush - Supreme court selected the winner.
Lose to Trump - Electoral college is unfair, Russia!!!1!!1One!
Lose House - Gerrymandering!
Lose Supreme Court Pick - Supreme court is illegitimate

You would think they would instead attempt to get middle class voters on their side, but it appears they think calling us racists and deplorables will scare us into voting for them and just accepting those names. I believe you are 100% correct in that the DNC will shortly start asking elections to not happen because they can't be done "fairly" (fairly being getting the results the DNC wants).

Good use of accelerometer

[SuperKendall]

The way I imagine the app working is that it pokes at you more and more with questions until the point you throw the phone, at which point it uses force measurement to determine level of anger.