Personal health systems for the management of chronic diseases have seen giant leaps in development over recent years. These systems offer vital sign monitoring and therapy delivery at home, focusing on the primary physical disease conditions. However, they do not provide support for early mood assessment or psychological treatment and lack a real-time comprehensive assessment of the patient’s mental status.
Depression is the third leading contributor to global diseases, and depressive mood state is also considered to be strictly related to the onset or worsening of a severe primary somatic disease. Indeed effective preventive medicine related to the onset of depressive symptoms as a comorbidity and worsening factor of psychosomatic diseases such as myocardial infarction, leg-amputation, cancer, and kidney failure is lacking.