National Institutes of Health Launches Fitbit Project as First Digital Health Technology Initiative in Landmark All of Us Research Program

Fitbit (NYSE:FIT), the leading global wearables brand, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) today launched the Fitbit Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) project, the first digital health technology initiative for the All of Us Research Program. Fitbit users currently enrolled in the program can now choose to sync their Fitbit accounts to help researchers unlock deeper insights into the relationships between health indicators such as physical activity, heart rate, sleep and health outcomes. By consenting to sync their data with All of Us, Fitbit users have the opportunity to contribute to one of the world’s largest precision medicine studies and help build one of the most diverse data sets for scientific research. Fitbit is the first wearable to be included in the program.

Launched nationally in May 2018, All of Us seeks to enroll one million or more participants, with the goal of improving the ability to prevent and treat disease based on individual differences in lifestyle, environment and genetics. Participants will be invited to share different types of health information over time through surveys, electronic health records, physical measurements, biosamples and digital health technologies. Data will be made accessible to researchers for a wide range of health studies, with strict safeguards in place to protect participant privacy.

“Collecting real-world, real-time data through digital technologies will become a fundamental part of the program,” said Eric Dishman, director of the All of Us Research Program. “This information in combination with many other data types will give us an unprecedented ability to better understand the impact of lifestyle and environment on health outcomes and, ultimately, develop better strategies for keeping people healthy in a very precise, individualized way.”

As a national leader in research using digital health technologies, Scripps Research is spearheading the program’s digital health effort. In 2017, Scripps Research selected Fitbit as the first wearable for use in the groundbreaking All of Us program, based on the popularity and credibility of its use in peer-validated clinical research. An analysis¹ published by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) Journal found that Fitbit devices are the most commonly used tracker in biomedical research. To date, more than 675² published studies have used a Fitbit device and according to a recent analysis, Fitbit is registered in ClinicalTrials.gov studies 10 times as often than other brands.³ This includes the use of Fitbit devices in areas such as diabetes, cardiovascular health, oncology, mental health and post-surgery.