This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
App links keystrokes with manic, depressive episodes in bipolar disorder
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
BiAffect, an app that monitors mobile device usage to predict manic and depressive episodes in bipolar disorder, recently won the Mood Challenge for ResearchKit, a contest for new ways of studying mood disorders using Apple’s ResearchKit.
“The vision for BiAffect is for it to serve as a kind of ‘fitness tracker’ for the brain,” researcher Alex Leow, MD, PhD, of the University of Illinois at Chicago, said in a press release. “The Mood Challenge helped us to realize this vision, and the finished app will be a first-of-its kind tool for researchers to study mood disorders and even cognitive disorders such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease.”
Leow and colleagues will receive a $200,000 grand prize to continue to develop and launch their app.
Results from a pilot study, conducted by Leow and colleagues, indicated an association between altered keystroke dynamics and depressive and manic episodes among 30 individuals with bipolar disorder.
“During a manic episode, people with bipolar disorder exhibit some common behaviors, such as talking really, really fast, with diminished self-control and flight of ideas,” Leow said in the release. “It is thus natural that they also exhibit similar abnormalities in nonverbal communications that are typed on their phones.”
BiAffect may also help determine efficacy of different treatments for bipolar and other mood disorders.
“Unobtrusively monitoring health from an iPhone combines low-cost scalability with far-reaching impact to potentially improve the lives of millions of people,” researcher Peter C. Nelson, PhD, of the University of Illinois at Chicago, said in the release.