National Institutes of Health Will Use Fitbit Data to Inform Precision Medicine at Scale

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) launched last year All of Us, a new initiative to gain insights on the health of millions of Americans using wirelessly connected devices. Precision medicine will help policy-makers and healthcare practitioners better understand the unique health needs by passively collecting biometric data. This week the NIH announced that it will be giving 10,000 Charge 2 and Atla HR Fitbit devices to collect sleep, hear-rate, physical activity and other lifestyle information from participants. This data will be used to inform future research and health policy. Dr. Steven Steinhubl, a cardiologist and Director of Digital Medicine at the Scripps Translational Science Institute wrote, "All of Us is designed to completely change the way we think about health and treatment and make it much more individualized. A key part of that is understanding physiologic changes." This personalized data could be a key factor to the success of implementing precision medicine at scale. Adam Pellegrini, General Manager of Fitbit Health Solutions said, "What could be yielded are insights that help personalize medicine and help scientists in the future find new cures, because every single one of us is different." Source: Rachel Arndt, Modern Healthcare.