The Collaborative Aging Research Using Technology Initiative: An Open, Sharable, Technology-Agnostic Platform for the Research Community

Abstract

<b><i>Introduction:</i></b> Future digital health research hinges on methodologies to conduct remote clinical assessments and in-home monitoring. The Collaborative Aging Research Using Technology (CART) initiative was introduced to establish a digital technology research platform that could widely assess activity in the homes of diverse cohorts of older adults and detect meaningful change longitudinally. This paper reports on the built end-to-end design of the CART platform, its functionality, and the resulting research capabilities. <b><i>Methods:</i></b> CART platform development followed a principled design process aiming for scalability, use case flexibility, longevity, and data privacy protection while allowing sharability. The platform, comprising ambient technology, wearables, and other sensors, was deployed in participants’ homes to provide continuous, long-term (months to years), and ecologically valid data. Data gathered from CART homes were sent securely to a research server for analysis and future data sharing. <b><i>Results:</i></b> The CART system was created, iteratively tested, and deployed to 232 homes representing four diverse cohorts (African American, Latinx, low-income, and predominantly rural-residing veterans) of older adults (<i>n</i> = 301) across the USA. Multiple measurements of wellness such as cognition (e.g., mean daily computer use time = 160–169 min), physical mobility (e.g., mean daily transitions between rooms = 96–155), sleep (e.g., mean nightly sleep duration = 6.3–7.4 h), and level of social engagement (e.g., reports of overnight visitors = 15–45%) were collected across cohorts. <b><i>Conclusion:</i></b> The CART initiative resulted in a minimally obtrusive digital health-enabled system that met the design principles while allowing for data capture over extended periods and can be widely used by the research community. The ability to monitor and manage health digitally within the homes of older adults is an important alternative to in-person assessments in many research contexts. Further advances will come with wider, shared use of the CART system in additional settings, within different disease contexts, and by diverse research teams.