The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) has been awarded a $9.75 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to create a platform called Health ePeople to streamline research data-collection through mobile and wireless devices.
It will build off the Health eHeart Study, which enables research using online and mobile devices such as smartphone apps, ECG smartphone cases and portable blood pressure cuffs, the school recently announced.
The new platform will help investigators collect mobile health data through integration with sensors, devices and apps, deliver online surveys and connect with external data sources including electronic health records.
The Health eHeart Study, launched in 2013, collects patient-reported outcomes and integrates with multiple sensors, devices and apps. It includes electronic consenting, options for external investigators to enroll their own participants, a study-management portal with real-time dashboard and flexible messaging system as well as a private, secure database and data-management system. The study, which aims to enroll 1 million participants and monitor heart health for at least 10 years, has more than 30,000 participants from around the world.
The research team plans to coordinate with other major ongoing mHealth projects, including the federal Mobile Sensor Data-to-Knowledge (MD2K) Center of Excellence, the private Open mHealth, the NIH Precision Medicine Initiative, and PCORnet, the PCORI National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network.
Any adult with a working email address can join the study, though it won't be signing up participants for several months. People can sign up now, though, through the Health eHeart Study with the option to use the new platform when it goes live.
The University of California, Los Angeles, and UCSF have been working together on a central database to collect smartphone users' health information as part of the Open mHealth Project.
Meanwhile, Yale School of Medicine researchers are using Apple iPhone and ResearchKit platform to gain a deeper understanding of how cardiomyopathy affects different age groups.
To learn more:
- read the announcement