The BU School of Public Health has signed a five-year partnership with virtual health organization Sharecare to mine fitness and network information to improve well-being nationwide. SPH and Sharecare will construct a Community Well-Being (CWI) Index using an enormous trove of fitness information collected by Sharecare mixed with SPH statistics on social determinants of health, all mined via the SPH Biostatistics and Epidemiology Data Analytics Center (BEDAC).
The Index will spotlight the important impact that surroundings have on one’s typical health. “The innovation is in taking the person and setting them in their context,” says Sandro Galea, dean of the School of Public Health and Robert A. Knox Professor. “This is a partnership between Sharecare and us to assist in boosting what they’ve executed earlier than the subsequent stage.”
Beginning in the fourth area of this 12 months, Atlanta-based Sharecare will distribute Index records in public ratings of healthy groups and states, in reviews to its existing customers in authorities, commercial enterprise, and the healthcare enterprise, and immediately to consumers through its Sharecare app. For instance, Sharecare’s clients—which include the State of Georgia, Walmart, Lockheed Martin, healthcare giant HCA, and the Medicaid system—will access record visualizations to better examine their populations’ health and implement strategies to improve well-being. Individuals using the apps might receive notifications reminding them to wear work clothes before traveling or suggesting health centers. Users in one of the United States’ urban “meal deserts” might be directed to an area where they can buy more healthy groceries.
“Simply placed, the CWI will increase our capability to deliver the proper interventions to people at the right time, which not most effectively will enhance their non-public health, but also the places wherein they work, stay, and play,” says Sharecare co-founder, chairman, and CEO Jeff Arnold, who also based WebMD.
Galea says the Index may motivate clients to start an exercise group at their office, create a new health facility in their local park, or organize to provide access to more nutritious food. “One of the honestly cool matters about this,” he says, “is that it creates a possibility to incentivize clients to not only enhance their own health but that of the humans around them, in their business enterprise or of their network.”
Sharecare, founded in 2010 by Arnold and cardiothoracic health care professional and TV personality Mehmet Oz, will provide anonymized data from 2.5 million man or woman fitness surveys and more than 45 million customers of its unfastened app. BEDAC has already employed numerous nonfaculty data scientists for the project, Galea says.
“We can study their facts and combine it with our records on social determinants of health,” says BEDAC government director Kimberly Ann Dukes (Wheelock’86, GRS’89, ’02), an SPH studies partner professor of biostatistics. “You are greater a product of the network in which you stay, work, and play than you watched you’re.
The 60 SPH data units covered five fundamental regions: built surroundings such as homes and infrastructure, fitness and healthcare, social and community context, training, and economic balance. These can be blended with additional records Sharecare will reap on grocery transactions, biometrics and lab effects, and prescription medication achievement.
Sharecare app users begin with the RealAge® check, an individualized health threat evaluation that shows their frame’s real age. Sharecare statistics supplied to BEDAC will include an anonymized version of the self-mentioned records, in addition to permission-based health tracker statistics, such as sleep, steps, and strain.
The app offers a customized action plan for every user to guide them to health and lifestyle modifications to improve their well-being. A new level of context and records can be presented in collaboration with the SPH approach.
