Self-monitoring and psychoeducation in bipolar patients with a smart-phone application (SIMPLe) project: Preliminary results from a feasibility study

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: The SIMPLe project was designed with the objective of developing a smartphone application, which could monitor and psychoeducate bipolar disorder patients through highly personalized messages based on both passive and active information. A secondary long-Term objective of the SIMPLe project is to integrate biomedical information with the mobile behavior information collected in order to determine predictive relapses patterns. METHODS: The phases of the SIMPLe project involved an iterative process with the active participation of both patients and mental health professionals. The feasibility study phase of the project analyzed variables from the recruitment phase and server requests from the users' application. RESULTS: The participation in the feasibility study was offered to 70 stable bipolar patients.43 subjects were enrolled in the study. The main reasons for those who did not take part of the study was not having a compatible device(59%). 95% of the initial participants remain actively using the application during the 3 months considered during which no relapses were identified. CONCLUSIONS: The results so far suggest a high acceptance from the patients enrolled in the study. However, due to the fragmentation of the smartphone market, there is a risk that this sample would not represents the whole population of bipolar patients. DISCUSSION: Mobile technologies seems a feasible option, which could bring a novel type of data to the mental health field. Even though, there are still challenges ahead in order to harness its full potential.