Open Wearables Initiative
OWEAR would like to thank the following organizations for their participation in the working group in its first year
The Initiative
The Open Wearables Initiative (OWEAR) is a collaboration designed to promote the effective use of high-quality, sensor-generated measures of health in clinical research through the open sharing of algorithms and data sets.
OWEAR serves as a community hub for the indexing and distribution of open source algorithms. To identify performant algorithms in areas of high interest, OWEAR acts as a neutral broker to conduct formal and objective bench marking of algorithms in selected domains.
We create searchable databases of bench marked algorithms and source code that can be freely used by all, thereby streamlining drug development and enabling digital medicine.
The Challenge
Wearables and other sensors such as ingestibles and in-home technologies provide the opportunity to monitor health in real-time in a continuous and objective manner, revolutionizing health, health care and health research. However, the lack of accepted endpoints is a major impediment to the adoption of digital measures in clinical trials. By leveraging the work of thousands of researchers from academia, pharma, and other organizations over the past decade, we can make major strides in addressing this challenge.
Approach
The Open Wearables Initiative develops community-based resources to access high-quality algorithms for use in the development of sensor-generated digital measures of health measures through three main functions:
Community hub for digital health algorithms:
To facilitate the process of finding and using algorithms for analysis of digital health sensor data, we create an open central hub to index algorithms and solicit depositions from across the community. A standard meta-data schema is developed to support developers with a common mechanism to describe, index, and discover digital health algorithms. They will be expected to link their source codes, APIs, and other documentation from GitHub or other public software locations. A uniform licensing agreement will be recommended to support reuse. This resource will facilitate the process of finding and using such algorithms with the goal of creating commonly accepted de facto standards. As the index matures, we expect to promote peer review and independent evaluation of content through collaboration tools, requirements for evidence in support of quality evaluation, and standards for algorithm development. The community hub will be seeded with algorithms arising from two sources: (A) the benchmarking program described below and (B) the Shimmer researcher community.
Community hub for digital health data:
To promote transparency and to facilitate the evaluation of algorithms, OWEAR distributes digital health data. Developers will be encouraged to submit data used in the development of algorithms to foster transparency in algorithm assessment. These data assets may also be (re)used by other researchers in algorithm development. In addition, OWEAR will seek to develop gold-standard data sets for the independent evaluation of algorithms.
Benchmarking program to identify performant algorithms:
OWEAR members work together to identify performant algorithms for digital measures of joint interest by conducting a set of algorithm bench marking programs. In each case, OWEAR gathers or develops data sets to serve in the evaluation of algorithm performance and then invites analysts to submit their algorithms for performance evaluation. This approach is designed to provide an objective evaluation of the state of the field and to identify best in class algorithms. Because digital measurement endpoint data is typically collected across a broad population in an uncontrolled and unmonitored setting, this effort also focuses on establishing standards for the evaluating performance across a broad range of conditions. Performance metrics are publicly exposed for all submissions, even in the event that the underlying algorithm remains proprietary. Evaluation queues remain open to be used as a mechanism to evaluate new algorithms as they are developed relative to existing ones.
Phase One Programs
OWEAR begins this program with a set of pilot measures selected by our members. These include two bench marking projects: one to collect and evaluate algorithms that measure gait from wearable data and one to collect and evaluate algorithms that measure sleep from wearable data. These projects serve to evaluate the utility of the bench marking program in active solicitation of high priority domains. It also serves to seed the algorithms and data content in the community hub. In addition to these focused efforts, we also solicit content from the research community including those that actively develop algorithms using Shimmer devices.
How You Can Help
OWEAR is actively seeking open source software and datasets from wearable sensors and other connected devices technologies to build our database of resources for the community. We will not be hosting the software or datasets, as there are existing repositories like GitHub, Synapse.org, and UCI Machine Learning Repository. We are focused on aggregating all these different resources and collecting the meta data required to make it easier for researchers to find and pick the algorithms that meet their needs the best. We are seeking all types of algorithms and dataset at this point. If you have an algorithm or a dataset that is publicly available, even if there are license restrictions, please register them below. The index of these algorithms and datasets will be made available to all in the near future.
Why Register
The founders of the Open Wearables Initiative are donating their time and resources to this effort to help move the whole industry forward. By registering your work, you are helping us achieve this goal.
Registering your algorithm and/or datasets may also provide some personal benefits for you. It will increase the visibility of both you and your work to clinical researchers, both in academia and industry. It may provide opportunities for consulting or other work. Finally, you will be able to get feedback and potentially help from end-users and other developers to augment your work.
Stay in Touch
We are actively building our community.
Please sign up if you would like to:
Receive periodic updates about the initiative
Receive notifications about DREAM Challenges and other programs and contests
Participate in occasional member surveys to provide input on the direction of the initiative
Volunteer
By submitting this form I agree to OWEAR using the information provided above, and receiving email communications for the requested services.