Managing Data in Help4Mood

Abstract

Help4Mood is a system that supports the treatment of people with depression in the community. It collects rich cognitive, psychomotor, and motor data through a Personal Monitoring System and a Virtual Agent, which is then analysed by a Decision Support System; analysis results are fed back to patients and their treating clinicians. In this paper, we describe how the complex data is managed and discuss ethical issues. Data is stored in functional units that correspond to treatment relevant entities. Custom XML DTDs are defined for each unit, which are used to exchange information between system components. As far as possible, observations and findings are coded using SNOMED CT to ensure interoperability with other applications such as Electronic Health Records.

Keywords

• XML
• depression
• SNOMED CT
• decision support