Since the 1980s, it’s been known that neurological soft signs (NSS) can distinguish schizophrenia from healthy individuals. NSS are subtle neurological impairments, mainly affecting sensory integration, balance, rapid movements, and orientation. Identifying them can improve diagnosis and treatment, yet assessing them has been hindered for over 40 years due to subjectivity in rating systems, making measurement and comparison challenging.

In 2016, Dr. Torous and his colleagues were the first to define “digital phenotyping,” the use of data from smart devices to identify behavior patterns that can detect disease. In the case of NSS, physicians can collect information from a smartphone’s motion sensors, like those that adjust the screen display from portrait to landscape and react to gaming-related gestures, to detect behavior patterns as possible NSS markers. For example:

A smartphone makes objective measurements so it can quantitatively evaluate how well a patient does on a test rather than have the examiner decide whether the patient is impaired. In addition, using smartphones for NSS measurement could reduce the time necessary for neurological office visits since patients could complete aspects of the examination before or after a visit.

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