An eMental-health application and customised questionnaires for stress measurement

Mobile applications provide a wide range of e-mental health services to the users. A majority of the current mobile applications is not based on appropriate diagnostics. Most current applications offer similar basic solutions and treatment to their users without conducting a comprehensive analysis on users’ special conditions. In this paper, after reviewing a number of e-health applications, we list the features of the application and propose a system architecture for mobile e-health applications that uses customized medical questionnaires to diagnose the illness of the user before offering any method of treatments. After diagnosis, the application suggests the appropriate treatment options based on the medical conditions of the patient. This paper investigates whether the use of customized questionnaires is enough to measure stress to create positive effects on e-mental health. We developed a medical app (eMedicalHelp) to test this hypothesis. As a proof of concept for the proposed solution, two case studies are provided. 10 students were asked to participate in a two-month testing period. After the testing period, we confirmed the results of the application with a certified practitioner. The application was able to correctly predict and diagnose illnesses of the participants. Our findings also indicate that customised questionnaires may be sufficient to measure stress and provide timely advice.