Development of the ehive Digital Health App: Protocol for a Centralized Research Platform

Area of Science:

• Digital Health
• Health Informatics
• Clinical Research Technology

Background:

• The proliferation of digital devices facilitates remote data collection for research.
• Remote digital study platforms enable scalable, frequent, and geographically flexible data acquisition.
• Frameworks for developing centralized digital research platforms are scarce.

Purpose of the Study:

• To provide a roadmap for developing centralized digital research platforms.
• To detail the technical and functional aspects of the ehive app.
• To discuss the ehive platform's ongoing studies, user statistics, and data infrastructure.

Main Methods:

• The ehive app facilitates e-consent and multimodal data collection for digital health studies.
• Methods for participant recruitment, retention, and data integration are described.
• Platform development, e-consent architecture, and dashboard interfaces are detailed.

Main Results:

• Launched in 2020, ehive has hosted 8 studies (6 observational, 2 clinical trials) with 1484 participants across 36 states.
• Broad recruitment achieved via electronic health records and email.
• Automated engagement methods ensure high participant retention.

Conclusions:

• Centralized digital research platforms like ehive empower researchers to conduct large-scale, longitudinal studies beyond institutional boundaries.
• These platforms facilitate the integration of multimodal data streams.
• The ehive platform offers a replicable model for digital health research program development.