Overview
MoodFx is an interactive mobile website designed to address gaps in recognizing and treating work-related impairments in working individuals with depression and anxiety. MoodFx helps people partner with their mental health care providers to track their outcomes before, during, and after treatment. As a person-centered, measurement-based care tool, MoodFx allows its users to:
- Screen for symptoms of depression and anxiety, and for problems with cognition and work functioning.
- Track symptoms when beginning a new treatment for depression or anxiety.
- Set reminders to check their symptoms regularly and before appointments.
- Print, email, or show results to health care providers directly on a mobile device.
- View past results and progress over time with simple charts.
- Receive helpful tips for managing depression, anxiety, and difficulties with cognition and work stress.
- Monitor for the return of any symptoms once they are feeling better.
MoodFx starts by gathering basic information, such as work status and core demographics (e.g., gender, age) to personalize its features. Users then respond to a brief set of questions that are scored and summarized in real time to provide immediate feedback about well-being and functioning in four areas:
- symptoms of depression,
- symptoms of anxiety,
- cognitive difficulties (i.e., trouble with thinking, such as short-term memory, concentration, attention, etc.), and
- work functioning.
Users can set reminders to complete this brief check-in regularly (usually once every one or two weeks) and before appointments with their family doctor, psychiatrist, or counsellor. MoodFx also stores and plots past results with simple charts, allowing users to easily track and visualize their progress over time.
All information collected by MoodFx is anonymized and securely and confidentially stored according to B.C.’s and Canada’s privacy laws. The information repository will enable the MoodFx team to analyze the anonymized data in individual and aggregate forms, evaluating MoodFx’s clinical usefulness and improving the services and features it provides in the future.
Project Goals
MoodFx aims to improve collaboration between people with MDD and their health care professionals by allowing users to monitor scientifically and personally meaningful outcomes that can assist clinical decision-making. By delivering a new, evidence‐based tool that can be made available to employers and employees across Canada, MoodFx will play a critical role in increasing workplace productivity and reducing claims to employee group benefits plans through systematic, quantifiable monitoring of occupational functioning in workers with clinical depression.
Project Team
MoodFx was developed in partnership between the Mood Disorders Centre (MDC), an integrated clinical research centre for people with mood disorders, and the University of British Columbia’s eHealth Strategy Office (eHSO). MoodFx was made possible through financial support from Lundbeck Canada.
Team Members:
Dr. Raymond Lam, Principal Investigator, MDC
Dr. Kendall Ho, Co-Principal Investigator, eHSO
Dr. Helen Novak Lauscher, Assistant Director, Research, eHSO
Cindy Woo, Project Manager, MDC
Vanessa Evans, Project Manager, MDC
Jennifer Cordeiro, Research Coordinator, eHSO
Tracy Thain, Senior Programmer & Technology Coordinator, eHSO
Project Status
MoodFx English was launched in the Fall 2014 and MoodFx French was released in early 2015.
MoodFx English can be found here – www.moodfx.ca
MoodFx French can be found here – www.fr.moodfx.ca
Contact
For more information about this initiative, please contact Michael Lim.