I-Corps: Digital Biomarkers Combined with Wearable Devices to Monitor Alzheimer’s Disease and other Neurological Disorders

这个I-Corps项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发一个基于云的预测分析平台，以识别、开发和验证数字生物标志物，这些生物标志物可以识别神经退行性疾病的早期迹象和其他与衰老相关的重要健康问题。现有的从老年人群中收集纵向数据用于临床和非临床研究的方法是缓慢的，昂贵的，劳动密集型的，并且经常引入有缺陷的数据。该项目可以通过使用智能手表在现实生活环境中汇总的被动和不显眼的患者生成数据来改善定性和定量行为和生物物理信息的研究。在规模上，该平台可用于建立预测高危人群疾病发作的模型，并帮助世界各地数百万人确定延迟阿尔茨海默病和相关痴呆症发作或减缓其进展的方法。此外，该平台可以使获得数据许可的制药公司能够在老龄化人群中进行重点临床试验。所提出的技术可以改进由可穿戴/智能手表制造商提供的健康相关应用，并且可以为关注健康的个人提供个性化的低成本行为修改干预建议，以便延迟、预防或减缓神经退行性疾病和其他健康问题的进展。这个I-Corps项目基于可在云中部署的分析模型的开发，以识别，测量和预测那些影响阿尔茨海默病和相关痴呆症高危人群的行为和临床特征。该技术是一种端到端的患者监测解决方案，通过将广泛使用的消费者智能手表的数据与基于云的分析和人工智能平台相结合，为患者，护理人员和医学研究人员带来好处，以提供更好的健康和行为信息。这一拟议的软件解决方案将高频数据聚合推进到一个集中的基于云的平台，在该平台上可以生成洞察力，并识别、开发和临床验证阿尔茨海默病、痴呆症以及老龄化人群中其他潜在疾病和合并症的数字生物标志物。这种原型人工智能驱动平台的开发可以提供一种解决方案，在现实生活环境中，在传统的临床试验之外，被动地和不引人注目地捕获患者生成的数据，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过利用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响进行评估，被认为值得支持审查标准。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of a cloud-based, predictive analytics platform to identify, develop, and validate digital biomarkers that identify early signs of neurodegeneration and other significant health-related concerns related to aging. Existing methods of collecting longitudinal data from aging populations for clinical and nonclinical research are slow, expensive, labor-intensive and often introduce flawed data. This project may improve research with qualitative and quantitative behavioral and biophysical information using passive and unobtrusive patient-generated data aggregated in real-life environments using smartwatches. At scale, this platform may be used to build models that predict disease onset in at-risk populations and help millions of individuals around the world identify means to delay the onset or slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. In addition, this platform may enable pharmaceutical companies with licensed access to data to conduct focused clinical trials in aging populations. The proposed technology may improve health-related applications offered by wearable/smartwatch manufacturers, and may provide health-concerned individuals with personalized low-cost behavior modification intervention recommendations in order to delay, prevent, or slow the progression of neurogenerative diseases and other health issues. This I-Corps project is based on the development of analytical models deployable within the cloud to identify, measure, and predict those behavioral and clinical features impacting people at high-risk for Alzheimer’s Disease and related dementias. The proposed technology is an end-to-end patient monitoring solution that benefits patients, caregivers and medical researchers by combining data from widely available consumer smartwatches with a cloud-based analytics and artificial intelligence platform to deliver improved health and behavior information. This proposed software solution advances high-frequency data aggregation to a centralized cloud-based platform where it is possible to generate insights and identify, develop, and clinically validate digital biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease, dementias, and other potential illnesses and comorbidities in aging populations. The development of this prototype artificial intelligence-driven platform may provide a solution to passively and unobtrusively capture patient-generated data beyond conventional clinical trials, in real-life settings, and advance capabilities to analyze digital health information from broad demographic populations.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.