Mobile Monitoring of Mood (MoMo-Mood) Pilot: A Longitudinal, Multi-Sensor Digital Phenotyping Study of Patients with Major Depressive Disorder and Healthy Controls

Mental disorders are a major global cause of morbidity and mortality. The surge in adoption of smartphones and other wearable devices has made it possible to use the data generated by them for clinical purposes. In particular, in psychiatry, detailed and high-resolution information on patient’s state, mood, and behavior can significantly improve the assessment, diagnosis and the treatment of patients. However, there is long path to turn the raw data created by these sensors, to information and insights that can be applied in clinical practice. Here, we introduce the MoMo-Mood Pilot: a study created to investigate the feasibility of using smartphones and wearables as data collection tools from subjects suffering from major depressive disorder. We collect data from 14 patients and 22 controls in two phases (active and passive). We demonstrate the feasibility of monitoring patients with several devices over short periods and passively monitoring them over long periods of time with minimal disruption in their daily activities. We identify and describe a series of challenges in this process. The MoMo-Mood pilot study is an encouraging step in the process of determining the effectiveness of using wearables for quantifying the behavior and the state of psychiatric patients with high temporal resolution, which can lead to their potential adoption in clinical practice.