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Background: Over the recent years, technological advances of wrist-worn fitness trackers heralded a new era in the continuous monitoring of vital signs. So far, these devices have primarily been used for sports.
Objective: However, for using these technologies in health care, further validations of the measurement accuracy in hospitalized patients are essential but lacking to date.
Methods: We conducted a prospective validation study with 201 patients after moderate to major surgery in a controlled setting to benchmark the accuracy of heart rate measurements in 4 consumer-grade fitness trackers (Apple Watch 7, Garmin Fenix 6 Pro, Withings ScanWatch, and Fitbit Sense) against the clinical gold standard (electrocardiography).
Results: All devices exhibited high correlation (r≥0.95; P<.001) and concordance (rc≥0.94) coefficients, with a relative error as low as mean absolute percentage error <5% based on 1630 valid measurements. We identified confounders significantly biasing the measurement accuracy, although not at clinically relevant levels (mean absolute error<5 beats per minute).
Conclusions: Consumer-grade fitness trackers appear promising in hospitalized patients for monitoring heart rate.
Ambalytics: a scalable and distributed system architecture concept for bibliometric network analyses
(2021)
A deep understanding about a field of research is valuable for academic researchers. In addition to technical knowledge, this includes knowledge about subareas, open research questions, and social communities (networks) of individuals and organizations within a given field. With bibliometric analyses, researchers can acquire quantitatively valuable knowledge about a research area by using bibliographic information on academic publications provided by bibliographic data providers. Bibliometric analyses include the calculation of bibliometric networks to describe affiliations or similarities of bibliometric entities (e.g., authors) and group them into clusters representing subareas or communities. Calculating and visualizing bibliometric networks is a nontrivial and time-consuming data science task that requires highly skilled individuals. In addition to domain knowledge, researchers must often provide statistical knowledge and programming skills or use software tools having limited functionality and usability. In this paper, we present the ambalytics bibliometric platform, which reduces the complexity of bibliometric network analysis and the visualization of results. It accompanies users through the process of bibliometric analysis and eliminates the need for individuals to have programming skills and statistical knowledge, while preserving advanced functionality, such as algorithm parameterization, for experts. As a proof-of-concept, and as an example of bibliometric analyses outcomes, the calculation of research fronts networks based on a hybrid similarity approach is shown. Being designed to scale, ambalytics makes use of distributed systems concepts and technologies. It is based on the microservice architecture concept and uses the Kubernetes framework for orchestration. This paper presents the initial building block of a comprehensive bibliometric analysis platform called ambalytics, which aims at a high usability for users as well as scalability.
o build, run, and maintain reliable manufacturing machines, the condition of their components has to be continuously monitored. When following a fine-grained monitoring of these machines, challenges emerge pertaining to the (1) feeding procedure of large amounts of sensor data to downstream processing components and the (2) meaningful analysis of the produced data. Regarding the latter aspect, manifold purposes are addressed by practitioners and researchers. Two analyses of real-world datasets that were generated in production settings are discussed in this paper. More specifically, the analyses had the goals (1) to detect sensor data anomalies for further analyses of a pharma packaging scenario and (2) to predict unfavorable temperature values of a 3D printing machine environment. Based on the results of the analyses, it will be shown that a proper management of machines and their components in industrial manufacturing environments can be efficiently supported by the detection of anomalies. The latter shall help to support the technical evangelists of the production companies more properly.
Process models are crucial artifacts in many domains, and hence, their proper comprehension is of importance. Process models mediate a plethora of aspects that are needed to be comprehended correctly. Novices especially face difficulties in the comprehension of process models, since the correct comprehension of such models requires process modeling expertise and visual observation capabilities to interpret these models correctly. Research from other domains demonstrated that the visual observation capabilities of experts can be conveyed to novices. In order to evaluate the latter in the context of process model comprehension, this paper presents the results from ongoing research, in which gaze data from experts are used as Eye Movement Modeling Examples (EMMEs) to convey visual observation capabilities to novices. Compared to prior results, the application of EMMEs improves process model comprehension significantly for novices. Novices achieved in some cases similar performances in process model comprehension to experts. The study's insights highlight the positive effect of EMMEs on fostering the comprehension of process models.
Background: Tinnitus is often described as the phantom perception of a sound and is experienced by 5.1% to 42.7% of the population worldwide, at least once during their lifetime. The symptoms often reduce the patient's quality of life. The TrackYourTinnitus (TYT) mobile health (mHealth) crowdsensing platform was developed for two operating systems (OS)-Android and iOS-to help patients demystify the daily moment-to-moment variations of their tinnitus symptoms. In all platforms developed for more than one OS, it is important to investigate whether the crowdsensed data predicts the OS that was used in order to understand the degree to which the OS is a confounder that is necessary to consider.
Tinnitus is a phantom sound perception in the ears or head and can arise from many different medical disorders. Currently, there is no standard treatment for tinnitus that reliably reduces tinnitus. Individual patients reported that acupressure at various points around the ear can help to reduce tinnitus, which was investigated here. With this longitudinal observational study, we report a systematic evaluation of auricular acupressure on 39 tinnitus sufferers, combined with a self-help smartphone app. The participants were asked to report on tinnitus, stress, mood, neck, and jaw muscle tensions twice a day using an ecological momentary assessment study design for six weeks. On average, 123.6 questionnaires per person were provided and used for statistical analysis. The treatment responses of the participants were heterogeneous. On average, we observed significant negative trends for tinnitus loudness (Cohen's d effect size: −0.861), tinnitus distress (d = −0.478), stress (d = −0.675), and tensions in the neck muscles (d = −0.356). Comparison with a matched control group revealed significant improvements for tinnitus loudness (p = 0.027) and self-reported stress level (p = 0.003). The positive results of the observational study motivate further research including a randomized clinical trial and long-term assessment of the clinical improvement.
The increasing prevalence of smart mobile devices (e.g., smartphones) enables the combined use of mobile crowdsensing (MCS) and ecological momentary assessments (EMA) in the healthcare domain. By correlating qualitative longitudinal and ecologically valid EMA assessment data sets with sensor measurements in mobile apps, new valuable insights about patients (e.g., humans who suffer from chronic diseases) can be gained. However, there are numerous conceptual, architectural and technical, as well as legal challenges when implementing a respective software solution. Therefore, the work at hand (1) identifies these challenges, (2) derives respective recommendations, and (3) proposes a reference architecture for a MCS-EMA-platform addressing the defined recommendations. The required insights to propose the reference architecture were gained in several large-scale mHealth crowdsensing studies running for many years and different healthcare questions. To mention only two examples, we are running crowdsensing studies on questions for the tinnitus chronic disorder or psychological stress. We consider the proposed reference architecture and the identified challenges and recommendations as a contribution in two respects. First, they enable other researchers to align our practical studies with a baseline setting that can satisfy the variously revealed insights. Second, they are a proper basis to better compare data that was gathered using MCS and EMA. In addition, the combined use of MCS and EMA increasingly requires suitable architectures and associated digital solutions for the healthcare domain.
Tinnitus is a complex and heterogeneous psycho-physiological disorder responsible for causing a phantom ringing or buzzing sound albeit the absence of an external sound source. It has a direct influence on affecting the quality of life of its sufferers. Despite being around for a while, there has not been a cure for tinnitus, and the usual course of action for its treatment involves use of tinnitus retaining and sound therapy, or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). One positive aspect about these therapies is that they can be administered face-to-face as well as delivered via internet or smartphone. Smartphones are especially helpful as they are highly personalized devices, and offer a well-established ecosystem of apps, accessible via respective marketplaces of differing mobile platforms. Note that current therapeutic treatments such as CBT have shown to be effective in suppressing the tinnitus symptoms when administered face-to-face, their effectiveness when being delivered using smartphones is not known so far. A quick search on the prominent market places of popular mobile platforms (Android and iOS) yielded roughly 250 smartphone apps offering tinnitus-related therapies and tinnitus management. As this number is expected to steadily increase due to high interest in smartphone app development, a contemporary review of such apps is crucial. In this paper, we aim to review scientific studies validating the smartphone apps, particularly to test their effectiveness in tinnitus management and treatment. We use the PRISMA guidelines for identification of studies on major scientific literature sources and delineate the outcomes of identified studies.
Physical and mental well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic is typically assessed via surveys, which might make it difficult to conduct longitudinal studies and might lead to data suffering from recall bias. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) driven smartphone apps can help alleviate such issues, allowing for in situ recordings. Implementing such an app is not trivial, necessitates strict regulatory and legal requirements, and requires short development cycles to appropriately react to abrupt changes in the pandemic. Based on an existing app framework, we developed Corona Health, an app that serves as a platform for deploying questionnaire-based studies in combination with recordings of mobile sensors. In this paper, we present the technical details of Corona Health and provide first insights into the collected data. Through collaborative efforts from experts from public health, medicine, psychology, and computer science, we released Corona Health publicly on Google Play and the Apple App Store (in July 2020) in eight languages and attracted 7290 installations so far. Currently, five studies related to physical and mental well-being are deployed and 17,241 questionnaires have been filled out. Corona Health proves to be a viable tool for conducting research related to the COVID-19 pandemic and can serve as a blueprint for future EMA-based studies. The data we collected will substantially improve our knowledge on mental and physical health states, traits and trajectories as well as its risk and protective factors over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic and its diverse prevention measures.
Smart sensors and smartphones are becoming increasingly prevalent. Both can be used to gather environmental data (e.g., noise). Importantly, these devices can be connected to each other as well as to the Internet to collect large amounts of sensor data, which leads to many new opportunities. In particular, mobile crowdsensing techniques can be used to capture phenomena of common interest. Especially valuable insights can be gained if the collected data are additionally related to the time and place of the measurements. However, many technical solutions still use monolithic backends that are not capable of processing crowdsensing data in a flexible, efficient, and scalable manner. In this work, an architectural design was conceived with the goal to manage geospatial data in challenging crowdsensing healthcare scenarios. It will be shown how the proposed approach can be used to provide users with an interactive map of environmental noise, allowing tinnitus patients and other health-conscious people to avoid locations with harmful sound levels. Technically, the shown approach combines cloud-native applications with Big Data and stream processing concepts. In general, the presented architectural design shall serve as a foundation to implement practical and scalable crowdsensing platforms for various healthcare scenarios beyond the addressed use case.