Not only can smartwatches help count steps and sleep, but they can also offer mental health doctors valuable information about symptoms of depression, according to a new study. Wearable technology is part of a focus on precision medicine that will allow doctors to better tailor treatment to individual patients, said Joshua Curtiss, an assistant professor of applied psychology at Northeastern University in the US.
“The purpose of this type of research was to see if we could use data from passive sensors to predict the things we care about — to see if it’s related to changes in depression severity or symptom severity,” Curtiss said. “It showed the very individual ways in which depression manifests itself in people,” he said in an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
For the study, the team took data from anonymized Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) patients who wore the Empatica E3 wristband to monitor sleep, acceleration and movement, heart rate variability and other physiological indicators, Health Daily reported. Changes in sleep patterns – too much or too little – can be symptoms of depression, as can lack of physical activity and social isolation.
