Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: May 21, 2023
Date Accepted: Sep 22, 2023
Developing the ehive Digital Health Application: Protocol for a Centralized Research Platform
ABSTRACT
Background:
The increasing utilization of smartphones, wearables, and connected devices enables the increasing application of digital technologies for research. Remote digital study platforms comprise a patient interfacing application that enables multimodal data collection from app and connected sources. There are few published descriptions of centralized digital research platforms to provide a framework for their development.
Objective:
This paper aims to serve as a roadmap to those seeking to develop a centralized digital research platform. We describe the ehive application, the centralized digital research platform of The Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai (HPI.MS) Hospital, New York, NY.
Methods:
An overview of ehive is provided. The ehive app is a multifaceted central digital research platform including a patient-facing mobile app that permits e-consent for digital health studies. An overview of its development and the tools it employs for participant recruitment and retention are provided. The way data sources are integrated with the platform and the infrastructure supporting its operations is discussed. Furthermore, a description of its subject and researcher-facing dashboard interfaces and the e-consent architecture is provided.
Results:
The ehive platform was launched in 2020 and has successfully hosted 8 studies. Approximately 1,484 potential participants have downloaded the app across 36 states within the United States. It demonstrates the successful deployment of a central digital research platform modifiable across study designs.
Conclusions:
Centralized digital research platforms such as ehive provide a novel tool that allows investigators to expand their research beyond their institution, engage in large-scale longitudinal studies, and combine multimodal data streams. It serves as a model for groups seeking to develop similar digital health research programs.
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.