Who are we?

Our partnership is on a mission to improve the lives of people living with long-term health conditions. We’re going to make the most of the data we’re all sitting on…the data held in our smartphones and wearables. We’re going to turn that data into world leading health research and help you to do the same, so that together, with patients at the heart of everything we do, we can transform health outcomes for everyone.

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Who are the Health Research from Home Partners?

It’s going to take the brightest minds in health, academia and technology to deliver our mission. Led by the University of Manchester and Professor Will Dixon, our partnership also includes:

What are we going to do?

We’ve thought long and hard about what is holding electronic, person generated health research back and what we can do to break down some of those barriers.

Unique Events

You won’t find events like ours anywhere else. They will be created and run by people who have successfully completed research projects using smartphones and wearables and they’ll be designed to help you complete your own research project.

We’re planning monthly webinars, an annual event, hackathons and grant writing retreats.

Webinar 4: Considering Health Equity When Using Digital Technology for Research Data Collection

Who: Dr Sabine van der Veer, Senior Lecturer in Health Informatics, University of Manchester and Syed Mustafa Ali, Research Associate, University of Manchester.

One of the most contentious issues in health research using smartphones and wearables is how it may benefit some people while digitally excluding others.

This month we face this topic head on. We have two expert speakers who will share the methods they employ to design digital tools for collecting patient-generated data for health research in a fair way.

Dr Sabine van der Veer, a senior lecturer in health informatics at the University of Manchester, shares the approaches she employs to design the numerous tools she has created in kidney disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and chronic pain.

Research Associate, Syed Mustafa Ali then shares his experience of successfully widening participation for the Manchester Digital Pain Manikin study. He explains the methods he used to recruit people from ethnic minority backgrounds that have been traditionally underserved in health research, and conduct focus groups with them to understand their digital self-reporting needs.

Whether you work in industry or academia, this webinar will help you to design a digital health study that better serves all members of society.

Webinar 3: Predicting COPD Exacerbations Using Personal Sensors

Who: Professor of Respiratory Epidemiology Jennifer Quint and Research Fellow Dimitris Evangelopoulos from Imperial College London.

We’re thrilled to welcome our partners at Imperial College London for the third webinar in the Health Research from Home series. This month, attendees will hear how Professor Jennifer Quint, Research Fellow Dimitris Evangelopoulos and their team used wearable technology to discover exacerbations in COPD or Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. If you want to learn more about how to successfully integrate self-reported data and GPS data into a research project, as well as descriptive and time series data analysis, you can’t miss this webinar.

Webinar 2: Digital Measures in Parkinson’s Disease

Who: Erin Rainaldi, Head of Sensors Data Science, and Senior Data Scientist, Johnny Ho from Verily.

What: Join us, in our second Health Research from Home webinar, for an in-depth analysis of Verily’s ‘Study Watch and Virtual Motor Exam’ clinical trial. Living with Parkinson’s disease can be cruel and painful. Through this trial, Verily worked with patients to find ways to make their journey less difficult. From conception and design, to developing and validating digital measures, to lessons learnt and future opportunities. Our speakers share their experiences of using wearable devices to help inform your future research.

Webinar 1: Health Research from Home

Who: Health Research from Home Lead, Professor Will Dixon

What: Introducing Health Research from Home – the revolutionary new partnership that will transform the future of health research using smartphones and wearables.

Our first webinar featured Health Research from Home Lead, Professor Will Dixon, who explained why our partnership was created and how we plan to revolutionise the future of health research. He also shared how he ran his successful research project, Cloudy With a Chance of Pain? The research showed that people with long-term health conditions are 20% more likely to suffer from pain on days that are humid and windy with low atmospheric pressure. This was done using a smartphone app developed by healthcare software company uMotif, participants recorded daily symptoms while the local weather was determined from location data provided by the smartphone’s GPS. 

Advice Clinics

Alongside each webinar you will have the opportunity to book on to an Information Governance Clinic, a Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) Clinic, and a Technology Clinic to support you as you develop your own smartphone and wearable health research project.

This is your chance to gain unique one-to-one advice with experts in their fields. This unprecedented access will allow you to discuss the specific issues holding your research back and gain practical advice on how to resolve these issues quickly and effectively.

Despite case studies of good success, patient-generated health data research is yet to deliver at scale because of many challenges. We hope that these clinics will help to fill those gaps in knowledge, skill and tools so that we can make the UK a world-leader in this field of research.

Bookings can be made for our Information Governance clinics now. Bookings will open for our PPIE and Technology Clinics later in the year.

Community

Our partners, Health Data Research UK (HDRUK) are enabling us to create a space where you can get the information you need to run your health research project using smartphones and wearables.

From finding the right people, to accessing data sets, to downloading methodologies, to guidance on Information Governance, to guidance on how to seamlessly integrate Patient and public involvement and engagement in your research. This online hub, due to go live in October 2024, will continue to grow as you tell us what information we can provide to support you.

Research

We have two, exciting driver projects underway right now. The first on understanding patterns of physical activity after knee replacements, and the second on long-term health outcomes of Long COVID. Both of which are aiming to link electronic, person generated health data to NHS data, something that will revolutionise the future of health research.

We’ll be sharing our own journey so that it can inform your research.

Find out more

Email hrfh@manchester.ac.uk to find out more about Health Research from Home.

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