UbiHealth 2010

Abstract

This workshop continues the series of UbiHealth workshops organized at the Ubicomp conferences. So far, the majority of work presented in earlier workshops and in the field of ubiquitous healthcare has focused on supporting people affected by somatic diseases. This year we call special attention on emerging research towards ubiquitous technologies for mental health and wellbeing. It is known that mental disorders are common diseases affecting all countries and societies. In recent years there have been various studies on correlating mental disease symptoms to objective physiological and behavioral measures in clinical settings. However, the current standard for diagnosis is still based on subjective clinical rating scales developed in the early 1960s. We see a new opportunity to exploit ubiquitous technology to provide the therapist with objective physiological and behavioral measures from the patient's daily life. The workshop will bring together researchers from ubiquitous computing and mental health professionals to present and discuss the latest work, focusing on how ubiquitous computing technology can be employed to design and support diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders and maintenance of mental wellness.

Mobile Health Systems for Bipolar Disorder

“…Current medical practice of bipolar disorder treatment is based on identification and analysis of mood instability episodes at different intervals of time without possibility of continuous monitoring in a practical way. On this regard, with the use of currently available technology and innovative processes proposed by recent research approaches (Mayora, 2011) it is envisioned in the short term a new generation of services to improve healthcare provisioning in the treatment of mental health diseases (Arnrich et al, 2010;Arnrich et al, 2013). In particular due to the wide acceptability of mobile devices and the growing interest in the development of healthcare-related apps, there is a clear trend on the use of mobile phones as a key enabler of new wellbeing/healthcare services.…”