Programme

The use of a smartphone to monitor and advise patients with obsessive-compulsive disorders

Format: Oral presentation 45 min | Language: English | Tags: social, psychology
Speakers: Nynke Spijksma, Javed-Vassilis Khan | Marina de Wolf Hospital Centre for Anxiety Disorders, Eindhoven University of Technology

Abstract
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) patients become engaged in repetitive behavior. This can be relatively innocent (e.g. unable to stop checking the car lock) but it can also have serious consequences (e.g. a parent unable to stop washing hands while an infant waits to be fed).

We are presenting a system which aims to understand better and to help OCD patients with this repetitive behavior. The system supporting OCD-patients consists of a website, a smartphone and a database. The website serves as an interface for the database for medical personnel and patients. The smartphone is given to patients. It runs an application through which patients can register the context under which the repetitive behavior occurs but also get feedback on how to stop this behavior.

The psychological impact of the proximity of the medical personnel at the patient’s home will be discussed. Patients need help, but they are also very ashamed and sometimes afraid to lose custody of their children. The researcher and the users are working together very closely. Two patients will be present during the presentation to answer questions about their experience with the system and engage in the discussion. Technical issues might be raised due to the fact that this is work in progress. The optimal case would be that the smartphones are able to recognize OCD behavior by detecting repetitive movement and the prolonged presence of the patient in a location with a high risk for OCD-behavior.

About Nynke
Nynke Spijksma is working at the Marina de Wolf Hospital Centre for Anxiety disorders since 2000. In 2002 she started working on the transfer of learning problem. Patients learn to stop their compulsive behavior at the hospital but often report difficulties keeping this up at home. Nynke started making video clips of compulsive behavior at the homes of the patients and show this to patients and their spouses. Especially with patients who have children this appears to have a strong motivational effect. Her article about this subject appeared in the December 2009 issue of the journal of Dutch anxiety specialists (Silhouet/ Ned-Kad). Since the summer of  2009 she’s working together with Javed-Vassilis Khan, to develop an interactive digital coach for OCD-patients. This research is now in an development and user-testing phase. Nynke Spijksma takes part in the Anxiety Research Group of Dr. Van Megen (GGZ Centraal). Hanneke du Mortier, another member of this group is currently preparing a PhD study, regarding the social psychological mechanisms and the effect of video-feedback and the usage of the digital coach. This developmemnal phase will be followed by a randomized controlled trial, to further validate intended effects on the target population of patients with severe OCD.

About Javed
Dr. Vassilis Javed Khan was born in Thessaloniki, Greece. After graduating from the Computer Engineering Department of University of Patras in Greece he worked as software engineering at the Computer Technology Institute (CTI) in Greece. His three year experience at CTI stimulated an interest in the field of human computer interaction. This interest lead him to the Netherlands where he completed the User-System Interaction (USI) post-masters program at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). As part of the USI program he worked at Vodafone R&D in Maastricht, the Netherlands were he researched interface and interaction aspects that affect a user’s trust in a system. For his PhD dissertation he researched the role of pervasive computing and more specifically awareness systems, in supporting intra-family communication at the Industrial Design department of TU/e. The Experience Sampling Method, one of the methods applied during his doctoral research, was the inspiration for him to continue as a post-doctoral researcher at the same department. His current research objective is to make a tool for researchers to conduct Experience Sampling studies from the comfort of their desks. He has recently become a father and has co-founded KidzFrame.com.