Shimmer Solicits Clinical Research Community Input on Expanded Open Wearables Initiative (OWEAR) Vision

October 26, 2020
As OWEAR embarks on its second year, organizers see potential to expand its positive industry impact beyond the organization's original mission

CAMBRIDGE, MA - Oct 26, 2020 - Shimmer Research, a global leader in wearable technology for research applications, today announced that the Open Wearables Initiative (OWEAR) is evaluating a significant expansion of its vision and seeking industry input to build consensus.

 

OWEAR was founded in Sept. 2019 as an industry collaboration to promote the effective use of high-quality, sensor-generated measures of health in clinical research. OWEAR has already achieved much of its original vision, building a community at www.owear.org which makes open source algorithms and wearable datasets more accessible, and instituting a benchmarking program to evaluate algorithms.

 

“We are excited and energized by what OWEAR has been able to achieve in its first year. We also recognize that there are other meaningful ways in which OWEAR could employ open source software and collaborate to develop accepted digital endpoints,” said Geoffrey Gill, OWEAR co-founder and president of Shimmer Americas. “As OWEAR is most effective when we all work together, we decided to solicit input from the entire clinical research community to shape our expanded vision.”

 

OWEAR’s progress to date has been guided by its 22-member Working Group, which includes participants from Shimmer Research, Nextbridge Health, Accelting, Sage Bionetworks, DiMe, Pfizer, Merck, Eli Lilly, Novartis, Johnson & Johnson, PRA Health Sciences, Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative (CTTI) and the IEEE Standards Association.

 

As the OWEAR Working Group realized the extent of the industry need and desire for this level of collaboration, it began to consider additional programs. For example, it is now developing OWEAR’s first Gait Challenge, which is designed to benchmark the accuracy and reliability of gait assessment algorithms. Precise gait measurements are vitally important because they are used as a diagnostic and prognostic tool for neurological conditions, a general assessment of aging, and as a proxy for evaluating cognition. The OWEAR Gait Challenge is envisioned to act as a template for future Challenges around other wearable sensor based digital outcomes.

 

OWEAR’s Working Group has defined several new areas where the organization could play a pivotal role. They include providing support for developers, creating open databases, initiating broader validation efforts, and setting industry standards.

 

Industry stakeholders are encouraged to share their views on these potential new programs and other areas of interest with OWEAR at www.OWEAR.org. Those who would consider sponsoring the OWEAR Gait Challenge are encouraged to contact Adam Litke at alitke@shimmersensing.com to obtain additional details about the program. 

 

About the Open Wearables Initiative (OWEAR)

OWEAR is an industry collaboration designed to promote the effective use of high-quality, sensor-generated measures of health in clinical research through the open sharing of algorithms and datasets. OWEAR serves as a community hub, indexing, distributing and benchmarking algorithms openly and transparently. It acts as a neutral broker, conducting formal, objective benchmarking processes and identifying high-performing algorithms in selected domains. Its vision is to provide the industry with a searchable database of benchmarked algorithms and source code that can be freely used by everyone to help streamline drug development and enable digital medicine. For more information, visit www.owear.org.

 

About Shimmer Research

Founded based on Intel technology in 2006, Shimmer Research is a well-established wearable technologies services and sensor manufacturing company based in Dublin, Ireland. In addition to standard products, Shimmer provides customized sensor development services, volume manufacturing, and complete wearable sensor solutions of any complexity. Shimmer’s technology and services have been employed by thousands of researchers at more than 900 leading companies, universities, and research institutes in more than 75 countries. Shimmer’s technology is incorporated in the products and services of more than 20 original equipment manufacturers. Shimmer has an ISO 13485:2016 certified medical devices quality management system. For more information, visit www.shimmersensing.com,  https://www.linkedin.com/company/shimmer/ or follow @ShimmerSensing.