Wearipedia - The Stanford Wearables Project
Did you know wearables can predict marital success?
We are making wearables easy-to-use for clinical researchers by building a Wearipedia of information, a python package to extract the data, and lots of examples on how to use them. Our goal is to make so health research is not limited to fancy clinical labs with large budgets. See how to use the Oura ring here.
We are located at Stanford University and have open positions in our lab, see below!
Wearipedia - Research position openings
How can you get your Apple watch/Fitbit/Oura ring data? If you use my phone before you go to bed, is your sleep different? Can you show its statistically significant? We want everyone to be able to answer these questions, without relying on which interfaces Apple and Fitbit make available. Moreover, it should be easy for everyone with a basic background in Python to answer these questions. This is where we need your help, just like how Chris Piech made probability accessible, we need your help to make wearables accessible. Your goal is to test new wearable devices, document their use, build data extraction tools and iPython notebooks analyzing their data. See an example here. We have many devices in our lab, and are continuously purchasing more. This is a fun way to get a detailed look into your personal health and apply your data science knowledge. We do not expect you to have any advanced background in data science other than knowing basic statistics and python. If you have a course with final data science projects, you're welcome to use the notebooks you develop.
Prereqs: CS 106A, CS106B. corequisites: CS109/STATS 116/Math151
Time commitment: 6 months, 12 hrs/week.
How can we help researchers extract data from wearables? How does a python package work? How can you make one that others can contribute to? (Open source) If these questions sounds interesting, and you'd like to learn more, this research position might be something for you! Your goal is to assist in developing our python package, open-source repository, infrastructure, and website. You will get a chance to learn how state-of-the-art open-source tool development. You do not need to have any background in python package development prior to starting, we will help you get setup. The only thing we ask of you is that you're as excited as we are and open to learn something new!
Prereqs: CS 106A-B, CS107, CS111
Time commitment: 6 months, 12 hrs/week.
How can the Dreem headband 3 help better understand PTSD and schizophrenia? If PTSD is correlated with changes in REM sleep, how do we measure the capacity of specific wearables for monitoring sleep stages? When using devices for research, we need to understand how much we can trust them and what best suits researchers needs. Your goal is to define on what parameters and how to evaluate wearable devices, motivated by pathology. You don't need to know a lot about wearables before starting, and we have already made some evaluations that can help guide you. In particular, we are excited by the use of wearables for sleep and mental health.
Prereqs: Junior pre-med equivalent.
Time commitment: 6 months, 12 hrs/week.
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FAQ
Who's responsible for the Wearipedia project? This is conducted at Stanford University, led by CS PhD student Alexander Johansen and chair of genetics Michael P Snyder. The project has international and stanford undergraduate collaborators.
What is a wearable? A wearable biomedical sensor devices, often referred to as wearables, are an electronic accessibles that can be worn either as a watch, in clothes, or in some cases embedded partially or fully withing the body.
What are examples of wearable devices? Smart watches, fitness trackers, EEG headbands, chest straps, smart sleeves, and patches with needles partially inserted into the skin to measure blood sugar.
What's the Wearipedia project? An analysis of what the best wearables are, a tool set to extract data from wearables, example code to visualize and analyze wearable data, and a website to conveniently showcase these findings to clinical researchers and data scientists.
Will i get a publication? Everything we work on, we publish. If you make a significant contribution, then yes. A significant contribution could be setting up testing infrastructure (Wearables infrastructure engineer), testing five devices (Wearables data scientist), or writing a section on what devices are optimal for testing sleep disorders (Wearables biomedical scientist).
Who's the Wearipedia project targeted? Clinical researchers who wants to conduct decentralized clinical trials.
What is a decentralized clinical trial? In conventional clinical studies participants had to go into a clinic or hospital to get monitored. In decentralized clinical trails participants can be recruited virtually and have devices (e.g. wearables) shipped to their home for monitoring and documentation.
Why do we care about decentralized clinical trials? Cost can be significantly reduced (for sleep analysis, an Oura ring gen 3 is $299 versus a $3000 per night polysomnography), many more participants can be recruited; including areas that are not in close proximity to clinics and hospitals, and the tools are much easier to access and use; which allows adoption outside of highly specialized clinical settings.
How do we help decentralized clinical trials? By better understanding the quality of devices, what we can expect from them, developing tools for easier access, and making the tools available with example scripts we empower adoption. In particularly, we empower smaller research groups, and a broader community, that does not have the personel to have dedicated professionals handling wearable access and development. Our goal is to have accessing health information, and running clinical experiments, accessible to basic python users.
If you are interested in joining our lab please write me a detailed email with you resume, transcripts, and what motivated you to pursue research in wearable technology.