An innovative smartphone app is being developed to help people with depression by tracking changes in their behaviour that could indicate the onset of a depressive episode.
The new app, actograph.dep, works by automatically tracking and analysing the way people use their smartphone and developing patterns of behaviour, including times and frequency.
Whenever the app recognises significant variations from your regular patterns, it sends a real-time notification to a chosen ‘Trust Buddy’, such as a friend or family member, who can then reach out to help.
“Any change in your normal pattern of behaviour can predict that something is going wrong,” Joseph Zohar, from the team behind the app, told The Sunday Times of Malta.
“We realised that all this data is already stored in the back of your phone, so we don’t need to do anything new.”
Prof. Zohar, a professor of psychiatry at Tel Aviv University, is the chairman of the Expert Platform on Mental Health, the multi-stakeholder initiative which developed the app. He was in Malta recently for Richmond Foundation’s conference.
Close to 30,000 Maltese people – or 6.6 per cent of the population – are estimated to suffer from chronic depression, according to a European health survey last year. Other studies have shown that less than a third of sufferers seek help for their condition.
Our app encourages the patient to talk, then it’s up to them whether to seek professional evaluation
Actograph.dep, Prof. Zohar explained, was created to empower people with depression and their families by giving them the tools to monitor their own condition, through technology already in their pockets.
“Changes in behaviour aren’t always obvious,” he said.
“Most importantly, our app encourages the patient to talk, then it’s up to them whether to seek professional evaluation.”
He added that as the app, which is free to use and non-commercial, adapted itself to each individual patient, it could work equally well across different languages and cultures. Users can also give feedback which the app uses to automatically refine its algorithm in determining whether a change in behaviour is pathological or just a false alarm.
Prof. Zohar said while the app was currently targeted in people with a history of depression, the same technology could be used in future, on phones or smartwatches, to allow for early identification of depressive tendencies.
Actograph.dep can be downloaded from the Google Play store. It is currently in beta stage and undergoing rigorous clinical testing ahead of a full release next year.