Demographic Imbalances Resulting From the Bring-Your-Own-Device Study Design

Area of Science:

• Digital health
• Biomedical informatics
• Public health

Background:

• Digital health technologies (smartphones, wearables) offer potential for disease prevention and treatment.
• Bring-your-own-device (BYOD) studies leverage participant-owned technology for rapid, large-scale data collection.
• BYOD designs bypass budget and familiarity limitations of traditional cohort studies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify and describe demographic imbalances in existing bring-your-own-device (BYOD) digital health studies.
• To propose a novel guideline for improving demographic representation in BYOD study designs.
• To mitigate potential biases in digital health research and subsequent technology development.

Main Methods:

• Review of existing digital health studies employing a BYOD approach.
• Analysis of demographic data from selected BYOD studies to identify representational disparities.
• Development of the Demographic Improvement Guideline based on identified imbalances.

Main Results:

• Existing BYOD digital health studies exhibit significant demographic imbalances.
• These imbalances can lead to biased study outcomes and skewed technology development.
• The proposed Demographic Improvement Guideline offers a framework to enhance representativeness.

Conclusions:

• BYOD studies, while efficient, risk introducing bias if demographic representation is not actively managed.
• Addressing demographic imbalances is crucial for equitable and effective digital health innovation.
• The Demographic Improvement Guideline provides a practical approach to achieve more inclusive digital health research.