DearDiary—An IBM Watson Powered Mental Healthcare Tracker

Abstract

Depression is a common illness worldwide, with an estimated 350 million people affected by it. Barriers to effective care include lack of resources and trained healthcare providers, social stigma associated with mental disorder and inaccurate assessment. Our project, Dear Diary, is aimed at tackling the problem of diagnosis and monitoring of patients suffering from depression. In addition to psychotherapy and medication as treatment, patients can maintain a daily log using the app. The app performs sentiment analysis on the entries made by users using IBM Watson’s^® Alchemy API. A weekly report of the user’s emotions is provided to help with self-monitoring of one’s emotional well-being. Doctors can view and manage reports of their patients generated by the app through a web application. This helps doctors with diagnosis and assessment of patients mental health. The app also allows patients to receive feedback from doctors.