Health Data Exploration Project Issues Call for Proposals
San Diego, Calif., Nov. 19, 2014 -- Members of the Health Data Exploration Network are invited to submit proposals for “agile” projects of up to $75,000 that advance the use of personal health data for research.
The leadership at the Health Data Exploration (HDE) project defines “agile” projects as those that are short-term (two to six months) and provide a timely and efficient methodology in terms of program scoping, solicitation, peer review, contractual negotiations, etc. It’s expected the projects will match the pace typically adopted by industry. These could be new projects or add-ons to existing studies. An agile development approach also allows the research Network to create new research opportunities, an open infrastructure and data sources for the research community and new training opportunities for the field.
"Personal health data is a dynamic, rapidly changing domain,” says Matthew Bietz of the UC Irvine Department of Informatics, who is lead co-investigator for HDE. “We have to bring together innovators across sectors to develop new tools and methods. This seed funding will help to jump-start these collaborations and explore the opportunities to use personal health data to understand human health."
The HDE project, and its associated Network, is supported by the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, which is based at both the University of California, San Diego (where it is known as the Qualcomm Institute) and UC Irvine. Earlier this year, HDE issued a report titled Personal Data for the Public Good, which found that many people who track health-related data are interested in sharing that data with researchers in medical and
public health — provided adequate privacy controls exist.
The HDE Network brings together companies that collect and store personal health data, captured through the use of wearable devices, smartphone apps and social media, with researchers who mine these data for patterns and trends and other strategic partners. Through a set of research projects using personal health data, the Network will identify policies and best practices for using these new forms of data to produce transformative knowledge about health.
All stakeholders in the personal health data ecosystem are encouraged to submit proposals, be they behavioral, clinical and public health researchers, computer scientists, engineers, companies, methodologists, data analysts, qualitative researchers and others. Proposals are also encouraged from graduate students, post-doctoral employees, company interns and the like.
Proposals and projects should leverage collaborations with one or more members of the HDE Network, Steering Committee and/or the HDE Core Research Group.
For a full list of requirements for the proposals, visit the Health Data Exploration project website.
