App that tracks bipolar manic, depressive episodes
From: UIC News Center - 05/16/2017
By: Sharon Parmet

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) led the
development of BiAffect, an application for unobtrusively tracking mobile
device usage to anticipate manic and depressive episodes in people with
bipolar disorder. BiAffect won the Mood Challenge for ResearchKit
competition, which tasked participants to find new ways to study mood
disorders using Apple's open source ResearchKit iOS platform. BiAffect
analyzes keyboard dynamics such as typing speed to predict bipolar manic and
depressive episodes, and the $200,000 prize the UIC researchers won will be
used to refine and launch the app in the App Store. "People in the midst of a
manic episode commonly have reduced impulse control, so it is not surprising
that our pilot data supported that they tend to blow through the spell-check
alerts," says UIC professor Alex Leow. She notes BiAffect is designed "to
serve as a kind of 'fitness tracker' for the brain," and help researchers
assess the effectiveness of mood-disorder treatments.

Read the entire article at:
https://news.uic.edu/app-that-tracks-bipolar-manic-depressive-episodes-wins-award

Links:
BiAffect
http://www.moodchallenge.com/biaffect-finalist

mHealth Apps for Mood Measurement are Part of Growing Market
http://mhealthintelligence.com/news/mhealth-apps-for-mood-measurement-are-part-of-growing-market

Related:
Aware Study
http://www.moodchallenge.com/aware-study-finalist