LiveWell

New smartphone app shows promise in control of bipolar

Apps, apps everywhere!  There are hundreds of apps you can download to your phone or computer that are supposed to help you live a healthier lifestyle.  But, sadly, we know that many of them are just money-makers, with no clinical research or experience backing them up.  We’ve been following the field for some time, and we do have a directory of apps and links that have more credibility.  See our Links and Apps page for details. 

LiveWell is a new app that focuses on helping you make and keep plans for exercise, diet, and sleep schedules, but they do not neglect what they call the “four pillars” of health: physical, mental, social, and financial.  The program includes regular calls with a coach, so you are not just on your own to follow the instructions on your phone.  This, however, creates a limitation, which is that you must be a part of some health care system that supports use of the app.

A recent study published by the American Psychiatric Association looked at people with bipolar who were on regular medication and treatment but still at some risk of relapse or breakthrough episodes.  Use of the LiveWell app was associated with a significant reduction of relapse risk in patients in asymptomatic recovery.  Although the app did not show a comparable reduction of relapse risk in patients with a higher risk of relapse at study inception, the results are still considered promising for many people.

At present, the app is not available to individual customers, but you can check with your insurance provider to see if it is available to you.  In the future, we hope to use it for clients of Gateway Psychiatric Services, so stay tuned for more information.

Reviews show many still fall short

In a 2015 systematic review in PubMed, researchers reviewed 82 smartphone apps that provide either information or tracking tools for people with bipolar disorder. They found that only 22% of the apps addressed privacy and security, and that the apps provided information that was often not high quality.

Our sister site, gatewaypsychiatric.com uses the psychoeducation manual for bipolar disorder by Colom and Vieta in our Bipolar 101 course.  The PubMed review found that apps that provide education about bipolar covered on average only about 1/3 (4/11, 36%) of the principles that Colom and Vieta recommend for patient education.  Only a third of the apps (10/32, 31%) cited their information sources.

As in previous reviews of medical apps, there was no correlation between the quality of the information and user ratings highlighting the importance of caution for buyers.

Symptom monitoring apps generally failed to monitor critical information such as medication (20/35, 57%) and sleep (18/35, 51%), and the majority of self-assessment apps did not use validated screening measures (6/10, 60%).

The authors concluded that there is a need for more high-quality smartphone apps for bipolar disorder that provide evidence-based information and support.