The NIH’s (National Institute of Health) research program – All of Us – will use Fitbit devices to observe in order to gain a better understanding about impacts of biological conditions, environmental influences and behavioral characters on health.
A cooperation with The Scripps Translational Science Institute (STSI) funded by NIH through a grant allotted to The Scripts Research Institute (TSRI) has resulted in this study.
In this All of us Research program, STSI will work with Fitbit and post activity trackers to over 10,000 participants. As stated by Job Godino, A STSI’s Digital health tech lead and a PHD, this is one of the biggest wearable deployments in any population-based research.
“When you look across the broad landscape of studies that have measured physical activity and sleep objectively, the vast majority have only done so for four to seven days,” he says.
Adam Pellegrini, Fitbit’s General Manager of Health solutions, said
“The goal of this research is to gain insight into how a wearable device might impact compliance and engagement in a large national cohort study of this scale, At the end of the study, the researchers will provide recommendations on how the devices could be more broadly incorporated into the All of Us Research Program.”
As stated by Godino, Wearable tech, the ones that are designed specially by Fitbit, are tools of measurement that will measure the types of differences that are individual and could yield understandings necessary to provide us with precision medicine. It is expected that this data will be used by the researchers to get a better understanding of how physical health measures including physical motion, heart beat difference with age, sleep, disease and geography categorize to make a personalized line of action to preventive medicines that can assist in treating disease or avoiding them.
“Our pilot study will give us the opportunity to figure out how to do this without compromising the security or privacy of participants,” says Godino. “It will also allow us to test the best methods for communicating with participants about the importance of measuring health behaviors like physical activity and sleep, and physiological parameters like resting heart rate. We also want to learn how we can best motivate a large and diverse group of participants to wear the device we give them consistently over a long period of time. This is something that has not been done before.”
“Data sharing is a high priority to both researchers and participants, and these data should help answer some unique and important research questions,” he added. According to Godin, any Information collected from Fitbit devices will not only be re-identified but also released with a huge mass of all other data and pieces of information from All of US Research Program.
As claimed by Godin, not only newer health understandings but also evidence-based procedures will be generated from the contributions made through this information gained from this pilot study from which healthcare provides and researchers will be take help from.
“We will be collecting a variety of different data with the Fitbit devices. The large majority will be comprised of physical activity, exercise, and sleep data, but we will also be collecting things like height and weight, resting heart rate, and cardiorespiratory fitness,” he says.
Pellegrini also agrees with him “Because All of Us will build one of the world’s largest data sets with the goal of improving the ability to prevent and treat disease based on individual differences in lifestyle, environment, and genetics, this has the potential to create more effective and efficient treatment and prevention of disease,” he says.
In addition to that, Godino also believes that the influence of giving Fitbit devices on participant engagement and retention in addition to other activities of All of Us Research Program, will also be studied by the researchers. “We are also interested in studying long-term use of the Fitbits,” he says. “We think that receiving a Fitbit will motivate some people to stay engaged in the study, and we also want to identify ways to help participants wear the device for as long as possible.”
The All of Us Research Program consists of several organizations relating to healthcare, and also a cooperation with Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.
