Session Introduction: Digital health technology data in biocomputing: Research efforts and considerations for expanding access (PSB2024)

Abstract

Data from digital health technologies (DHT), including wearable sensors like Apple Watch, Whoop, Oura Ring, and Fitbit, are increasingly being used in biomedical research. Research and development of DHT-related devices, platforms, and applications is happening rapidly and with significant private-sector involvement with new biotech companies and large tech companies (e.g. Google, Apple, Amazon, Uber) investing heavily in technologies to improve human health. Many academic institutions are building capabilities related to DHT research, often in cross-sector collaboration with technology companies and other organizations with the goal of generating clinically meaningful evidence to improve patient care, to identify users at an earlier stage of disease presentation, and to support health preservation and disease prevention. Large research consortia, cross-sector partnerships, and individual research labs are all represented in the current corpus of published studies. Some of the large research studies, like NIH's All of Us Research Program, make data sets from wearable sensors available to the research community, while the vast majority of data from wearable sensors and other DHTs are held by private sector organizations and are not readily available to the research community. As data are unlocked from the private sector and made available to the academic research community, there is an opportunity to develop innovative analytics and methods through expanded access. This is the second year for this Session which solicited research results leveraging digital health technologies, including wearable sensor data, describing novel analytical methods, and issues related to diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) of the research, data, and the community of researchers working in this area. We particularly encouraged submissions describing opportunities for expanding and democratizing academic research using data from wearable sensors and related digital health technologies.

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