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Mobile apps and mental health: Using technology to quantify real-time clinical risk

Current Psychiatry. 2019 June;18(6):37-41
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“And you can change it, you can influence it.”
– Steve Jobs

Case report: Digital phenotyping

To illustrate how digital phenotyping could be put to clinical use, we created the following case report of a fictional patient who agrees to be monitored via her smartphone.

Consider a hypothetical patient we will call Ms. T who is in her mid-20s and has been diagnosed with schizophrenia. On a follow-up visit, she says she has insomnia. She also reports having a recent loss of appetite and higher levels of anxiety. After reviewing her smartphone data (Figure 3), the clinician sees an inversely proportional relationship between her sleep quality and symptoms of anxiety, psychosis, and depression, which suggests that these symptoms might be due to poor sleep. Her step count has been fairly stable, indicating that there is no significant correlation between physical activity and her other symptoms.

Ms. T’s sleep quality, step count, and survey scores as captured by a smartphone-based digital phenotyping platform

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