Wireless technology used to track and understand mood disorders

(News Canada)–Researchers working in a unique multi-disciplinary collaborative program are using wireless technology to track and understand bipolar mood disorder (sometimes referred to as manic-depression), one of the most devastating of the mood disorders.

Depression and distress cost Canadians billions of dollars each year in treatment, medication, lost productivity and premature death. Statistics Canada data shows that for 2000 and 2001, 12 per cent of the population experienced at least one major depressive episode within the past 12 months.

A group of researchers, led by Professor Charles Lumsden, from the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto, is using wireless technology to address the need for accurate and appropriate data collection. The results will be used in a database to improve knowledge about depression and mania in bipolar disorder.

"The goal is to better understand how normal mood differs from mood in bipolar disorder across the days, months and years of a person’s life," said Professor Lumsden. "We hope to understand how we might forecast life-threatening mood swings and how the mathematics of the mind’s life expresses itself through the universal experience called mood."

The research is an initiative of the Bell University Laboratories, a unique collaborative research program funded by Bell Canada that encourages innovation through collaboration in the development of communications technology in Canada.

The researchers use mobile computing and wireless technology to seamlessly link people in their daily lives with a research centre tracking mood dynamics. This is the first time an approach using this kind of technology has been tried. The device being used is the Kyocera Wireless 6035 Smartphone, which combines a Palm hand-held computer and a cellular telephone.

The device sends a customized questionnaire to the subject to fill out and return wirelessly. This also allows the program to gather data, activate the cell phone functions, place the phone call to the central data storage unit, transmit the data and hang up without further intrusion into the subject’s day. This form of data collection is more accurate than the paper and pen methods used in the past and allows for much more detailed data collection.

"Tracing mood dynamics with unprecedented clinical detail and temporal scope will be a principal resource for new, quantitative assessments of mood change," said Dr. Lumsden. "The application of technology in this cross-discipline approach has been invaluable in finding a solution to the kind of data the medical community needs to advance research in bipolar disorders."

- News Canada