WEB DESK: Along with Walking or jogging, now smartwatch will help to treatment for depression, according to new study.
Wearable technology is part of a focus on precision medicine that will allow clinicians to better tailor treatment for individual patients, said Joshua Curtiss, Assistant Professor of applied psychology at Northeastern University, US.
“The purpose of this type of research was to figure out if we can use passive sensor data to predict the things we care about to see if it is associated with changes in depression severity or symptom severity,” Curtiss said.
“It showed the very individualised ways depression manifests in people,” he said, in an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
For the study, the team took data from anonymised patients at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), who wore the Empatica E3 wristband to track sleep, acceleration and movement, heart rate variability and other physiological indicators.
Alterations in the pattern of sleep too much or too little can be symptoms of depression, as can lack of physical activity and social isolation.
All of these symptoms can be tracked by wearable technology in the form of digital watches and smart phones, In the case of socialisation with others, for instance, clinicians can view data to see how often text messaging apps have been used, he said
“I think passive sensor data can offer an incredible tool for getting more information that otherwise is really difficult to get”.
