Center for Digital Health awards first seed grants, 1,000 Apple Watches to five teams

The Stanford Center for Digital Health has awarded five seed grants and a total of 1,000 Apple Watches to research projects led by Stanford faculty.

The projects are designed to study whether creative uses of the smartwatches can achieve meaningful health care outcomes.

The center aims to advance the field of digital health by enabling research collaborations between faculty members and technology companies. “Our goal, simply stated, is to enable the Stanford community to do cool stuff to improve health care with technology,” said Mintu Turakhia, MD, associate professor of cardiovascular medicine and senior director of research and innovation at the center. 

The center provides platforms for digital health experts, industry members and students to come together and share knowledge; it’s also an internal resource for the Stanford community, providing infrastructure and support in the field of digital health.

“We aim to facilitate novel and transformative research with health care technology, leveraging the expertise and academic rigor of Stanford,” said Lauren Cheung, MD, MBA, clinical assistant professor of medicine and senior director of strategy and operations at the center.

Following is a list of the projects that received seed funding and their principal investigators:

• Harnessing mindset in health technology — Alia Crum, PhD, assistant professor of psychology.
• ReClaim: A virtual therapist for stroke patient arm recovery — Maarten Lansberg, MD, PhD, associate professor of neurology and neurological sciences; Scott Delp, PhD, professor of bioengineering and of mechanical engineering; and  Kara Flavin, MD, clinical assistant professor of orthopaedic surgery and of neurology and neurological sciences.
• Exploring an artificial intelligence approach to support adherence behaviors in psychiatric clinical care — Sarah Adler, PsyD, clinical assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, and Jane Kim, PhD, instructor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences.
• Stop, watch: Reducing hyperactivity and supporting attention for youth with ADHD — Leanne Williams, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences
• Individualized migraine attack prediction with self-reported and passively collected data — Lorene Nelson, PhD, assistant professor of health research and policy.