Smartphone App May detect mood swings in patients with bipolar disorder"
A smartphone application, or app, that monitors subtle qualities of and individual's voice during everyday telephone conversations may be able to detect early signs of mood changes in individual's with bipolar disorders, new research shows.
Research recruited six patients who all have a rapid-cycling from of type 1 bipolar disorder and a history of being prone to frequent depressive and manic episodes. Researchers studied these patients as they experienced all aspects of bipolar disorder mood changes, including mild depressions, hypomania, and manic states.
The app runs in the background on an ordinary smartphone and automatically monitors the patient's voice patterns during any calls they make, as well as during weekly conversations with members of their care teams.
Only the patient's side of phone calls were recorded, and the recordings were encrypted and kept off-limits to the research team. Researchers could only see the computer analysis results of the recordings, which were stored on secure servers that comply with patient privacy laws.
Standardized weekly mood assessment with a trained clinician provided a benchmark for the patient's mood and were used to correlate the acoustic features of speech with their mood state.
Researchers said that analysis of voice characteristics from everyday conversations could detect elevated and depressed mood . However,the detection of mood states elements improve over time as the software is further trained, based on more conversations and data from more patients.
The app currently runs on smartphones with the Android operating system. Researchers have applied for patent protection for the intellectual property involved.