UCLA launches major mental health study collecting & analyzing data from Apple wearables to better understand depression and anxiety

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Apple and UCLA kick off a three-year depres­sion study (CNBC):

UCLA on Tues­day said it is launch­ing a three-year study to bet­ter under­stand how fac­tors such as sleep, phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, heart rate and dai­ly rou­tines impact symp­toms of depres­sion and anxiety.

UCLA is work­ing with Apple to design the study, which will use data col­lect­ed by the iPhone, Apple Watch and Bed­dit sleep-track­er … involves 150 par­tic­i­pants recruit­ed from among UCLA Health patients. From there, the next phas­es of the research will expand out to 3,000 par­tic­i­pants from both the hos­pi­tal and the stu­dent body. Study par­tic­i­pants will down­load an app onto their iPhones, then receive a Bed­dit sleep mon­i­tor and an Apple Watch, which they can use through­out the study.

… Out­side of Apple and UCLA, there’s a grow­ing inter­est in tap­ping into the data gleaned from smart­phones and wear­able devices — so-called “dig­i­tal exhaust” — to deter­mine how peo­ple are far­ing. For instance, com­pa­nies like Mind­strong Health are look­ing into whether changes in how peo­ple type into a key­board app can pro­vide ear­ly insight into their men­tal health status.

The Study:

UCLA launch­es major men­tal health study to dis­cov­er insights about depres­sion (press release):

The three-year study, which begins this week, was co-designed by researchers at UCLA and Apple to obtain objec­tive mea­sures of fac­tors such as sleep, phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, heart rate and dai­ly rou­tines to illu­mi­nate the rela­tion­ship between these fac­tors and symp­toms of depres­sion and anx­i­ety … The study is the lat­est mile­stone for the Depres­sion Grand Chal­lenge, an ambi­tious UCLA ini­tia­tive involv­ing researchers from across dis­ci­plines to iden­ti­fy genet­ic and envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors that con­tribute to depres­sion, under­stand the bio­log­i­cal changes that depres­sion caus­es in the brain and body, accel­er­ate progress in diag­no­sis and treat­ment and end the stig­ma asso­ci­at­ed with the dis­or­der. UCLA chose to take on this chal­lenge because depres­sion afflicts more than 300 mil­lion peo­ple world­wide, result­ing in near­ly 1 mil­lion sui­cides a year…

Freimer (Note: Dr. Nel­son Freimer, direc­tor of the UCLA Depres­sion Grand Chal­lenge) empha­sizes that ensur­ing the pri­va­cy and secu­ri­ty of study par­tic­i­pants’ data is a high pri­or­i­ty for both UCLA and Apple. UCLA will process and main­tain study data in a secure envi­ron­ment, with access lim­it­ed to mem­bers of the UCLA research team. UCLA and Apple will ana­lyze the data only after they are cod­ed and stripped of names and oth­er con­tact information.

The Study in Context: