TY - JOUR
T1 - The Collaborative Aging Research Using Technology Initiative
T2 - An Open, Sharable, Technology-Agnostic Platform for the Research Community
AU - Beattie, Zachary
AU - Miller, Lyndsey M.
AU - Almirola, Carlos
AU - Au-Yeung, Wan Tai M.
AU - Bernard, Hannah
AU - Cosgrove, Kevin E.
AU - Dodge, Hiroko H.
AU - Gamboa, Charlene J.
AU - Golonka, Ona
AU - Gothard, Sarah
AU - Harbison, Sam
AU - Irish, Stephanie
AU - Kornfeld, Judith
AU - Lee, Jonathan
AU - Marcoe, Jennifer
AU - Mattek, Nora C.
AU - Quinn, Charlie
AU - Reynolds, Christina
AU - Riley, Thomas
AU - Rodrigues, Nathaniel
AU - Sharma, Nicole
AU - Siqueland, Mary Alice
AU - Thomas, Neil W.
AU - Truty, Timothy
AU - Wall, Rachel
AU - Wild, Katherine
AU - Wu, Chao Yi
AU - Karlawish, Jason
AU - Silverberg, Nina B.
AU - Barnes, Lisa L.
AU - Czaja, Sara
AU - Silbert, Lisa C.
AU - Kaye, Jeffrey
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020
PY - 2020/11/26
Y1 - 2020/11/26
N2 - Introduction: Future digital health research hinges on methodologies to conduct remote clinical assessments and in-home monitoring. The Collaborative Aging Research Using Technology (CART) initiative was introduced to establish a digital technology research platform that could widely assess activity in the homes of diverse cohorts of older adults and detect meaningful change longitudinally. This paper reports on the built end-to-end design of the CART platform, its functionality, and the resulting research capabilities. Methods: CART platform development followed a principled design process aiming for scalability, use case flexibility, longevity, and data privacy protection while allowing sharability. The platform, comprising ambient technology, wearables, and other sensors, was deployed in participants' homes to provide continuous, long-term (months to years), and ecologically valid data. Data gathered from CART homes were sent securely to a research server for analysis and future data sharing. Results: The CART system was created, iteratively tested, and deployed to 232 homes representing four diverse cohorts (African American, Latinx, low-income, and predominantly rural-residing veterans) of older adults (n = 301) across the USA. Multiple measurements of wellness such as cognition (e.g., mean daily computer use time = 160-169 min), physical mobility (e.g., mean daily transitions between rooms = 96-155), sleep (e.g., mean nightly sleep duration = 6.3-7.4 h), and level of social engagement (e.g., reports of overnight visitors = 15-45%) were collected across cohorts. Conclusion: The CART initiative resulted in a minimally obtrusive digital health-enabled system that met the design principles while allowing for data capture over extended periods and can be widely used by the research community. The ability to monitor and manage health digitally within the homes of older adults is an important alternative to in-person assessments in many research contexts. Further advances will come with wider, shared use of the CART system in additional settings, within different disease contexts, and by diverse research teams.
AB - Introduction: Future digital health research hinges on methodologies to conduct remote clinical assessments and in-home monitoring. The Collaborative Aging Research Using Technology (CART) initiative was introduced to establish a digital technology research platform that could widely assess activity in the homes of diverse cohorts of older adults and detect meaningful change longitudinally. This paper reports on the built end-to-end design of the CART platform, its functionality, and the resulting research capabilities. Methods: CART platform development followed a principled design process aiming for scalability, use case flexibility, longevity, and data privacy protection while allowing sharability. The platform, comprising ambient technology, wearables, and other sensors, was deployed in participants' homes to provide continuous, long-term (months to years), and ecologically valid data. Data gathered from CART homes were sent securely to a research server for analysis and future data sharing. Results: The CART system was created, iteratively tested, and deployed to 232 homes representing four diverse cohorts (African American, Latinx, low-income, and predominantly rural-residing veterans) of older adults (n = 301) across the USA. Multiple measurements of wellness such as cognition (e.g., mean daily computer use time = 160-169 min), physical mobility (e.g., mean daily transitions between rooms = 96-155), sleep (e.g., mean nightly sleep duration = 6.3-7.4 h), and level of social engagement (e.g., reports of overnight visitors = 15-45%) were collected across cohorts. Conclusion: The CART initiative resulted in a minimally obtrusive digital health-enabled system that met the design principles while allowing for data capture over extended periods and can be widely used by the research community. The ability to monitor and manage health digitally within the homes of older adults is an important alternative to in-person assessments in many research contexts. Further advances will come with wider, shared use of the CART system in additional settings, within different disease contexts, and by diverse research teams.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85110447160&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85110447160&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1159/000512208
DO - 10.1159/000512208
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85110447160
SN - 2504-110X
VL - 4
SP - 100
EP - 118
JO - Digital Biomarkers
JF - Digital Biomarkers
ER -