Using Smartphones to Monitor Bipolar Disorder Symptoms: A Pilot Study

Area of Science:

• Digital Health
• Psychiatry
• Bipolar Disorder Research

Background:

• Relapse prevention in bipolar disorder can be enhanced by monitoring daily patient symptoms.
• Smartphone applications offer accessible, low-cost methods for collecting this data.
• Limited research has explored the utility of smartphone-derived data for bipolar disorder symptom tracking.

Purpose of the Study:

• To pilot test the Social Information Monitoring for Patients with Bipolar Affective Disorder (SIMBA) system.
• To determine if smartphone measurements could predict clinical symptom levels and changes in bipolar disorder.
• To test hypotheses that smartphone data negatively correlate with depressive symptoms and positively with manic symptoms.

Main Methods:

• 13 patients with bipolar disorder used a smartphone monitoring app for up to 12 months.
• Clinical rating scales assessed depressive and manic symptoms.
• Random-coefficient multilevel models analyzed relationships between smartphone data and clinical symptoms.

Main Results:

• Smartphone measures correlated with overall symptom levels and changes.
• Lower self-reported mood predicted higher depressive symptoms.
• Decreased social communication and physical activity predicted increased depressive symptoms.
• Lower physical activity and higher social communication predicted manic symptoms.
• Decreased physical activity predicted increased manic symptoms.

Conclusions:

• Smartphone measurements show potential for monitoring bipolar disorder symptoms in daily life.
• Some objective and subjective smartphone data related to clinical symptoms.
• Further validation in larger samples is required.
• The study's conclusions are limited by the low symptom prevalence in the sample.