The Center of Excellence for “Mobile Sensor Data-to-Knowledge” (MD2K) https://md2k.org team is going to turn the wealth of mobile sensor data available through new and rapidly evolving wearable sensors into reliable and actionable health information to greatly contribute to predictive, preventive, personalized, participatory, and precision medicine.
The MD2K team comprises 20 plus faculty, 20 plus students, four staff, and three software engineers from 12 institutions and the non-profit Open mHealth. The center is one of eleven National Centers of Excellence funded through NIH’s Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) https://datascience.nih.gov/bd2k initiative.
The BD2K initiative is designed to support advances in research, policy, and the training needed for the effective use of big data in biomedical research. The goal is to turn the wealth of mobile sensor data into reliable and actionable health information.
The MD2K team is directly targeting smoking since it is a complex health condition with high mortality risk. This study with smokers will also have applications to other complex diseases, such as asthma, substance abuse, and obesity.
To proceed with the project, the MD2K team gathered immense amounts of data from a population of smokers for two weeks 24/7 using wrist and chest bands, along with mobile phones to track not only movements but also locations. The information collected detected when a newly abstinent smoker lapsed for the first time in a smoking cessation attempt.
To help with the smoking cessation project, the computational model, called “puffMarker” was developed using hand gestures from smartwatches and the breathing signature from respiration sensors.
This work was led by Nazir Saleheen, a PhD student working with MD2K Director Dr. Santosh Kumar. “Development of the puffMarker model fulfilled a longstanding need to precisely pinpoint the timing of the first smoking cessation lapse. This work has opened the doors to the data collected by mobile sensors that can be used to deliver just-in-time mhealth intervention to improve smoking cessation rates.” Kumar reports.
David Welter, Professor and Chair of Psychology and Cho Lam, Senior Faculty Fellow of Psychology both at Rice University, helped to refine “puffMarker” Welter and Lam received a five year grant from the National Cancer Institute www.cancer.gov to examine puffMarker and other mobile sensors developed by MD2K for the pathways linking socioeconomic status to stress, smoking lapse, and abstinence among smokers trying to quit.
The MD2K program will make their tools, software, and training materials widely available and also organize workshops and seminars to encourage researchers and clinicians to become familiar with the program and tools.