Fitbit Inc. wearable devices are going to contribute patient tracking data in a national health database.

Adam Pellegrini

The National Institutes of Health selected Fitbit as the wearable health tracking device for its medicine research program All of Us. The government program, which launched in 2015, is working to collect data from one million patients to research, prevent and treat diseases based on individual differences in lifestyle, environment and genetics, Adam Pellegrini, general manager of Fitbit Health Solutions, tells Internet Health Management. 

As part of this program, The Scripps Research Institute is working with Fitbit for a one-year study of 10,000 volunteers from the All of Us study to find how physical activity, heart rate and sleep patterns differ by age, geography and disease categories. This data will be used to see if there is correlation with lifestyle behavior and health outcomes from the larger All of US study.

“Researchers will use data from the program to learn more about how individual differences in lifestyle, environment and biological makeup can influence health and disease,” Pellegrini says.

“These efforts will ultimately create an individualized care approach to treatment,” Pellegrini adds.

The Fitbit program is launching in stages with a beta test first and then a full national roll out in spring 2018, Pellegrini says. There is no set end date for the program, he says.

The Fitbit program is free for volunteers and the National Institutes of Health is purchasing the Fitbits with grant funds. Fitbits generally cost $130 per device.

Pellegrini says Scripps Research chose Fitbit for the study because of the metrics it tracks, its multi-day battery life and capability with smartphones. Plus the wearable device is popular with consumers, as Fitbit has sold 70 million devices, and researchers, as the devices have been used in 440 published studies.

“Fitbit’s mission is to make the world healthier and this study has the potential to help improve precision medicine and to deliver smarter, more personalized care in the future, which is incredibly exciting,” Pellegrini says. “By collaborating on this effort, Fitbit and Scripps hope to contribute to our understanding of how known genetic factors and external factors, such as behavior and geography, influence disease risk and outcomes.”

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