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Monitoring sleep via smartphones shows potential for psychiatric disorders

Evidence from pilot studies demonstrates the feasibility and acceptability of monitoring sleep using smartphones and wearable devices among people with depression, anxiety and psychotic disorders; however, further study is needed, according to a study published in Current Psychiatry Reports.

“While clinical evidence for the effectiveness of many ... apps to aid in the diagnosis, monitoring and adjunctive treatment of psychiatric conditions is limited and lacking at present, there has been even less focus on the ability of smartphone apps to track and promote positive health behaviors such as sleep among persons living with mental illness,” Talayeh Aledavood, PhD, of the department of psychiatry, University of Helsinki, and of the department of computer science, Aalto University, Finland, and colleagues wrote.

Because of the important connection between sleep and mental health, the researchers reviewed the current evidence on using smartphones and wearables to track and monitor sleep in individuals with mental illness, reported the current state of the science related to digital interventions for sleep and mental health, and considered future research directions.

“Prior technologies such as [polysomnography] or actigraphy are not part of an individual’s daily routine, whereas smartphones are ubiquitous and can yield new opportunities to track behaviors in a noninvasive manner,” Aledavood and colleagues wrote. “Moreover, smartphones have embedded sensors that can facilitate data acquisition (eg, accelerometer, microphone), offering novel opportunities to passively monitor patients in their natural environments.”

Searching relevant online clinical databases and reviewing recent studies yielded six studies that utilized smartphone apps for monitoring sleep and delivering targeted instructional content related to sleep hygiene and two studies that utilized wearable devices for tracking sleep patterns.

Based on their findings, Aledavood and colleagues highlighted three important take-home messages:

• most of the studies suggested that smartphones could track patients’ activity and be used to find new biomarkers of mental disorders, and some studies reported that wearable sensors demonstrated feasibility to monitor changes in sleep characteristics;
• smartphones showed potential to collect both passive data — via smartphones’ embedded sensors — and active data — via mobile-friendly surveys — from subjects; and
• using separate wearables to collect data on sleep may be unnecessary because smartphones include most of the sensors needed to monitor sleep.

The researchers also noted that none of the studies that tried to replicate or reproduce research results using consumer mobile technologies for sleep reported improvement in clinically meaningful sleep and mental health outcomes over time, indicating that more research is needed.

“At present, smartphone technologies do not appear to offer the quality or depth of sleep data compared to [polysomnography], though it is plausible that as the technology and methods improve, new possibilities for detecting sleep problems in individuals with psychiatric disorders will emerge,” they concluded. – by Savannah Demko

Disclosure: Aledavood reports no relevant financial disclosures. Please see the study for all other authors’ relevant financial disclosures.