Ecological Momentary Assessment Using a Mobile Phone

Abstract

The mobile phone has become a popular tool for providing information and capturing responses from different groups of people because of its technological features and portability. EMA (Ecological Momentary Assessment) is commonly used by health researchers to contemporaneously capture information regarding human experience. The authors proposed the use of a mobile EMA system as a supportive intervention to collect real-time patient data and to give back real-time advice. In this study, a mobile EMA system has been utilized by patients with a variety of conditions, including mood disorders, behavior disorders, and physical disorders. The real-time data collection included one or more pieces of information at each moment to improve understanding the causal mechanisms of disease. The effectiveness of real-time advice has been examined by comparing a mobile EMA system with and without this function. Patient compliance was high on average, at approximately 89%, and was higher, at approximately 93%, when advice was given. In several cases, the supportive intervention was shown to help patients improve their health conditions. However, the results were dependent on the patients’ motivation, environment, and relationship with their doctor. The EMA data regarding advice given showed that symptoms tended to improve in most cases.