The asthma mobile health study, smartphone data collected using ResearchKit

Abstract

Widespread adoption of smart mobile platforms coupled with a growing ecosystem of sensors including passive location tracking and the ability to leverage external data sources create an opportunity to generate an unprecedented depth of data on individuals. Mobile health technologies could be utilized for chronic disease management as well as research to advance our understanding of common diseases, such as asthma. We conducted a prospective observational asthma study to assess the feasibility of this type of approach, clinical characteristics of cohorts recruited via a mobile platform, the validity of data collected, user retention patterns, and user data sharing preferences. We describe data and descriptive statistics from the Asthma Mobile Health Study, whereby participants engaged with an iPhone application built using Apple's ResearchKit framework. Data from 6346 U.S. participants, who agreed to share their data broadly, have been made available for further research. These resources have the potential to enable the research community to work collaboratively towards improving our understanding of asthma as well as mobile health research best practices.

Impact Of “eHealth” in Allergic Diseases and Allergic Patients

“…Asthma was one of the first conditions to be included in the ResearchKit platform (Apple), an open source framework for research that can be used to obtain informed consent, collect questionnaires, collect biometric data, provide reminders and notifications, and store data securely. The specially designed Asthma Health Application allowed a group of researchers to conduct the Asthma Mobile Health Study, which resulted in the collection of data from over 7000 American participants, 6000 of whom agreed to share their data publicly for further research [75]. Initial analysis of this dataset revealed increased reporting of asthma symptoms in regions affected by heat, pollen, and wildfires [76].…”

Mobile Apps

“…With the addition of ResearchKit in 2015, Apple created an innovative open-source approach towards easily collecting data from large cohorts that give informed consent and provide data completely from the app. Successful applications have been described in Parkinson, asthma and spine disease [4,5,35]. An Android alternative for ResearchKit is the open-source initiative ResearchStack.org.…”

Application of Machine Learning to Support Self-Management of Asthma with mHealth

“…We used the AMHS [6] [7] dataset in our study. The AMHS was conducted via Asthma Health App, an Apple app designed using ResearchKit for the purpose of the study, and contains data (daily and weekly surveys, asthma and medical history, demographic, EuroQol 5-dimensions 5-levels (EQ-5D-5L) survey, and location data) collected, often sporadi- cally, by 5,875 US participants with self-reported physician diagnosed asthma over 21 months.…”

“…The AMHS had also obtained informed participant's consent through the app, which ensured they understood the risks, benefits, and options of study participation [7]. Furthermore, these data were made available for further research by the authors in 2018 [6].…”