The PsyMate ™ app has been developed by the Department of Psychiatry and Neuropsychology of Maastricht University and smarteHealth GmbH as a means to make Experience-sampling research more accessible and available to regular healthcare practice. With the help of the app, people get a grip on behavior and psychological complaints in daily life, in the context of both psychological and somatic (physical) disorders. People can download the app themselves or use it as a platform to conduct an ESM study. The app is built according to GDPR rules, complies with privacy standards, works on both Android and iOS systems and can collect data offline. There is also an online reporting module, in which the ESM data is presented visually to the user. Information about the app can be found on the website www.psymate.eu, but also, for example, on www.psychosenet.nl.
The PsyMate™ app can be downloaded for free from the App Store or Google Play Store. After logging in PsyMate ™ gives, at random times during the day, a signal to complete a short questionnaire. The questions are about how you feel at the time, what you do, where and with who you are. It takes about 1 minute to complete the questionnaire. After a while, an image of your daily life emerges. You can view the results via an online reporting module, accessible via your personal login details. You can see what you spend the most time on, how your feelings change over the day and what this may be related to. The data is strictly personal. PsyMate ™ can be used for research, independently as a self-help tool or in consultation with a practitioner.
PsyMate ™ can be used in various ways in research and within healthcare. People can download the app themselves and can get started with monitoring their functioning in daily life. Results can be viewed online, possibly together with a health care professional or with a friend/relative. PsyMate™ is also used within Maastricht UMC + as a standard outcome measure (to follow recovery) or as a support tool for targeted treatment processes (for example for the treatment of tinnitus). Psychological and physical complaints often go hand in hand and can be well tracked with the app. PsyMate™ is also used in primary care in general practices, initiated by the mental health professional (in Dutch called the POH-GGZ). A large-scale project is underway that carefully examines the deployment and usability of this app in this setting (LIME). Within mental health care institutions such as GGzE and Mondriaan, the app is used to support treatment as a functional analysis tool or to monitor medication tapering. The questionnaires in the app are generic, which means that the questions are useful for people with different types of complaints and different types of treatment. The app has recently been used to support the mental well-being of healthcare personnel who have been active within COVID-19 treatments.
You can download the app for free in the Google Play Store or the Apple App store. Please mind that you opt for PsyMate™ 2.
