NiMBaLWear analytics pipeline for wearable sensors: a modular, open-source platform for evaluating multiple domains of health and behaviour

Abstract

BackgroundRecent technological advances have led to a surge in the use of wearable devices for personal health and fitness monitoring; however, clinical uptake of wearable devices for remote or ‘free-living’ measurement of daily health-related behavior has lagged. To advance the field, there is need for valid and reliable outcomes across multiple health domains specific to the cohorts or patients of interest and centralized tools to build capacity for use of these data. The NiMBaLWear pipeline provides a flexible and integrated approach to wearables analytics applied to raw sensor data that considers multiple, inter-related physiological and behavioral signals to provide a holistic view of health status.Results & discussionNiMBaLWear is a modular, open-source, wearable sensor analytic pipeline that quantifies physical activity, mobility, and sleep from raw single- or multi-sensor free-living data collected over multiple days. Data captured from any device, in different possible formats, are standardized prior to processing. Data preparation includes accelerometer autocalibration, cross-device synchronization, and non-wear detection. Validated, domain-specific algorithms detect events, generate outcome measures, and output standardized tabular data and user-friendly summary collection reports. NiMBaLWear was developed in Python using an iterative and incremental software development process, which included a combination of semi-automated inspection and expert review of data collected from 286 participants across two remote-measurement studies. A comparative analysis revealed a paucity of open-source packages capable of deriving and sharing health-related behavioral outcomes across multiple domains from multi-sensor wearables data. Forthcoming improvements to the pipeline will leverage sensor fusion techniques to add new, and refine existing, domain- and disease-specific analytics, and optimize pipeline accessibility and reporting.ConclusionThe NiMBaLWear pipeline transforms raw multi-sensor wearables data into accurate and relevant outcomes across multiple health domains to objectively characterize and measure an individual’s daily health-related behavior. NiMBaLWear’s focus on high-quality, clinically relevant outcomes, as well as end-user optimization, provides a foundation for innovation to improve the utility of wearables for clinical care and self-management of health.