Health services around the globe still struggle with mental health disorders, relying on a patient to provide documentation of mood changes in a journal or be open with a doctor or psychiatrist.
Both solutions are not seeing excellent results, which is why U.K. based Cambridge Cognition and Ctrl Group have announced Cognitive Kit, a software platform that lets patient express their mood and improve memory, attention, and reaction on a wearable.
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The platform is built into the Apple Watch and Microsoft Band 2, which both feature heart-rate sensors. Other wearable devices will receive support in the future.
Mental health via “mood faces”
For now, patients are able to select six different mood faces and send them to a doctor or psychiatrist. Patients will also be able to play a variety of games throughout the day, which may show patterns in mood and memory or reaction deficiency.
Cognitive Kit, similar to Apple’s ResearchKit, will be open source. That means scientists and research will be able to dig into the data, find patterns, and hopefully improve mental health treatment.
In a two week trial, Cambridge Cognitive said over 30 million data points were recorded on wearables. If the kit was provided to every mental health patient that approves, we could see hundreds of millions more data points.
Cambridge Cognitive is looking to partner with healthcare and pharmaceutical providers to launch the Cognitive Kit. Alzheimer’s is one of the disorders it wants to tackle first, after presenting the platform to the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference.
