About GET Labs + Expo

The GET Conference is preceded by a uniquely interactive event on April 25th called GET Labs + Expo. Anyone can sign-up for GET Labs, where you get the opportunity to experience some of the best participatory health research studies available today. You can advance human health and disease research through direct participation in up to 17 different studies. GET Expo is a forum designed especially for researchers interested in learning about new tools and services that support the execution of successful participatory research studies. We know how challenging this can be, so we provide space for people with solutions and experience to come together. Details listed below.

Interested in attending Labs+Expo on April 25th?

GET Labs for Participants

• American Gut Project
  PI: Rob Knight, PhD. University of California, San Diego

  Ever since Antonie van Leeuwenhoek discovered a vast diversity of microbes between his own teeth in the 17th century using a primitive microscope, the microbes inhabiting our bodies have fascinated us. In the last few years, radical advances in DNA sequencing have allowed us to examine—for the first time—the full extent of microbial diversity on or in our bodies and to explore possible linkages between microbes and a wide range of health and disease states. At American Gut, the gut is our main focus, but we also look at oral, skin and even vaginal microbial communities.

  

• Asthma Mobile Health Study
  PI: Yvonne Y-Feng Chan, MD, PhD. Mount Sinai, New York

  With apps powered by Apple’s new ResearchKit, you can easily participate in medical research studies and help contribute to improving healthcare. Our team at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai invites you to join our Asthma Mobile Health study. This app is a personalized tool that helps you to gain greater insight into your asthma, avoid triggers, adhere to treatment plans, and take charge of your health. The Asthma Health app helps you to track your asthma symptoms, allows you to review trends, gives you feedback on your progress, and provides personalized reminders to take your prescribed medications. The Asthma Health app has even added new features that allow you to share information collected on the app with your doctor.

  

• Boston Stress Study
  PI: Neha Keshav, PhD. Neumitra, Boston

  The Boston Stress Study will build a normative dataset to investigate the human costs of acute and chronic stress. Our technologies measure the continuous physiology of stress and rest tied to contextual factors from mobile phones to visualize real-time effects of daily life stressors. By focusing on Boston’s diverse range of demographics, professions, and lifestyles across neighborhoods and socioeconomics, we are quantifying how stress and rest affect our health, productivity, and performance.

  

• Circles In Human Biology
  PI: Abigail Wark, PhD. and Cliff Tabin, PhD., Harvard Medical School, Boston

  The age of personalized genomics offers an unprecedented chance to understand the biology of uniquely human traits. One interesting and understudied human-specific trait is the areola, a circle of specialized, pigmented skin surrounding the human nipple. Areolas have been proposed to play an intriguing role in human evolution; different features of the areola have been linked to sexual selection, nursing behavior, and infant weight gain. Developmentally, circular markings have a simple genetic architecture. This means that studying areolas can help us learn about the genetic underpinnings of distinctively human traits, while also laying important groundwork for improving breast and infant health.

  

• Dna Land
  PI: Yaniv Erlich, PhD. New York Genome Center and Columbia University, New York

  DNA Land is a place where you can learn more about your genome while enabling scientists to make new genetic discoveries for the benefit of humanity. Our goal is to help members to interpret their data and to enable their contribution to research.

  

• Engaging With Personal Genomic Information
  PI: Orit Shaer, PhD. Wellesley College

  With your help, we aim to improve the design of websites and tools that make personal genomic information more accessible and understandable by the general public. We are academic researchers in the field of Human Computer Interaction that study opportunities and challenges for applying advanced HCI techniques in the area of personal genomics. We seek to learn more about the motivations, attitudes, and needs of users engaging with their personal genomic information. Thus, we look for volunteers who have already spent some time studying their own personal genomic data and want to tell us about their experiences. We also plan to examine what human-computer interaction and visualization techniques and can help people to learn and generate new meaningful knowledge from their personal and family data. (image credit: flickr user irglover)

  

• Feverprints
  PI: Fatma Dedeoglu, MD. Boston Children's Hospital, Boston

  Fever is one of the most common signs of illness, and its presence causes anxiety to many. It can also indicate the presence of other medical conditions, including autoimmune and autoinflammatory diseases. Surprisingly, 150 years after temperature became a “vital sign” taken at every medical encounter, we still know very little about fever. Feverprints aims to understand how body temperatures differ between individuals of different backgrounds, ages, sizes, gender and time of day in order to redefine what “normal” and “febrile” temperatures are. Secondly, we seek to identify specific fever patterns (“feverprints”) for different illnesses that will allow doctors to make quicker and more accurate diagnoses. Finally, we look to determine the effect of antipyretics (medicines to decrease fever) on the severity and length of an illness.

  

• Gleams Project
  PI: Clifford Andrew MD, PhD. Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore

  Alzheimer’s Disease and other forms of progressive cognitive impairment are world-wide and growing phenomena of epidemic proportion as our populations age. The underlying causes are poorly understood, but are thought to represent a complex interaction between various gene sets and environmental factors. To date there have been no really efficacious treatments to alleviate the symptoms or delay the progression of disease. The Genomic Longitudinal Environmental Aging Memory Study or GLEAMS proposes to systematically study volunteers aged 46-75 years old from the Harvard Personal Genome Project PGP and other genome sequence studies looking for causes and cures for these late-life dementias.

  

• Goviral Study
  PI: Rumi Chunara, PhD. NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering, Brooklyn

  GoViral enables volunteers to provide specimens when sick with respiratory or gastrointestinal infections. Participants receive profiling data from samples, potentially learning what type of virus they sampled. By sampling when symptoms occur, participants can validate symptomatic reports and further understanding of how self-reported data and symptom profiles relate to different illnesses. Aggregate, anonymous community data is also shared about what is circulating in your local community.

  

• Harvard Personal Genome Project
  PI: George Church, PhD. Harvard Medical School, Boston

  The Personal Genome Project is creating a freely available scientific resource that brings together genomic, environmental and human trait data. These data are donated by volunteers enrolled in a PGP study from our global network. Initiated by George Church at Harvard Medical School in 2005, the PGP has pioneered ethical, legal, and technical aspects related to the creation of public resources involving highly identifiable data like human genomes.

  

• Human Immunome Project
  PI: James Crowe, MD. Vanderbilt Vaccine Center, Nashville

  The human body has an astounding capacity to recognize foreign pathogens using an enormous collection of diverse antibodies and cells in the immune system. Recent advances in genetic technology now could make it possible to determine the sequence of every immune molecule in the human population. As such, the Human Vaccines Project has proposed a flagship program, Human Immunome Project to define the sequence of all of these molecules, providing a definitive road map for design of new vaccines optimally configured to use the immune molecules available in humans to respond to vaccines. The goal is to compute the diversity of the repertoire in naïve B and T cells across the human population, with an initial target of defining 1,000 immunomes. image credit: NIAID

  

• Indoor Track Facility Microbiome And Its Relationship To Runners’ Nostril And Salivary Microbiomes
  PI: Brian Klein, PhD. Forsyth Institute, Cambridge

  The goals of ‘Indoor Track Facility Microbiome and its Relationship to Runners’ Nostril and Salivary Microbiomes’ are twofold. First, to define the microbiome of a previously unexplored built indoor environment: Indoor track facilities. Second, to identify the nostril and salivary microbiomes of runners who train indoors versus outdoors. This study is being carried out in Greater Boston, a temperate climate that contains 3 of the 22 Elite Development Clubs of the USA Track and Field (USATF), more than any other location.

  

• Keeping Pace
  PI: Rumi Chunara, PhD. NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering, Brooklyn

  Keeping Pace studies how personal sensor data in aggregate can help us understand how the relation between the built environment and types and amounts of exercise varies over time.

  

• Mole Mapper
  PI: Dan Webster, PhD. National Cancer Institute, Bethesda

  Mole Mapper is a cellphone app built using Apple’s ResearchKit. Using the iPhone camera, Mole Mapper tracks and quantitatively measures your moles over time and provides you with a reference map of your skin. With monthly reminders for re-measurement, the app aims for early detection of any abnormal mole growth. By sharing mole images, participants are empowering researchers to develop new ways to evaluate moles to better understand melanoma risk and early cancer detection.

  

• Mpower
  PI: Stephen Friend, MD PhD. Sage Bionetworks, Seattle

  In March 2015, Sage Bionetworks launched mPower, an observational smartphone-based study developed using Apple’s ResearchKit library, to evaluate the feasibility of remotely collecting frequent information about the daily changes in symptom severity and their sensitivity to medication in PD. The study interrogated aspects of this movement disorder through surveys and frequent sensor-based recordings from participants with and without Parkinson disease. These measurements provide the ability to explore classification of control participants and those who self-report having PD, as well as to begin to measure the severity of PD for those with the disease. Benefitting from large enrollment and repeated measurements on many individuals, these data may help establish baseline variability of real-world activity measurement collected via mobile phones, and ultimately may lead to quantification of the ebbs-and-flows of Parkinson symptoms.

  

• Open Humans
  PI: Madeleine Ball, PhD. PersonalGenomes.org, Boston

  Open Humans aims to break down data silos in human health and research. We believe data has a huge potential to live and grow beyond the boundaries a single study or program. Our online portal allows members to aggregate data from the research they participate in. By connecting individuals willing to share existing research data about themselves with researchers who are interested in using that data, data can be re-used and built upon.

  

• Personal Exposure Project
  PI: Ruthann Rudel, MS. Silent Spring Institute, Newton

  Silent Spring Institute is launching a crowdfunded biomonitoring study to learn more about how people are exposed to environmental chemicals. Participants will submit a urine sample for analysis that will be tested for a group of chemicals including antimicrobials, parabens, and phthalates and will receive a report of their results. We will use these data to characterize the public’s exposure to toxic chemicals, identify predictors of high exposure, and find the best ways to avoid exposure.

  

• Preference Project
  PI: Christian Zuend, PhD Candidate and Ernst Fehr, Phd. University of Zurich, Switzerland

  Social norms and social preferences affect the way we interact with others everyday. Biologists have come to realize that microbes might have influenced the development of human social behavior, because close interactions facilitate the exchange of microbes between different hosts. The Preference Project collects information on human preferences and social norms to investigates the influence of the microbiome on the development of human social preferences and behavior. After completion of the study, participants will receive detailed feedback on their measured preferences and how they compare to the preferences of a representative sample of Americans.

  

• Teamstudy
  PI: Alvaro Pascual-Leone, MD, PhD. Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston

  TeamStudy is part of The Football Players Health Study at Harvard University, and is the first app dedicated to understanding the health and wellness of former professional football players by engaging thousands of former NFL players and the general public alike. Collecting information from large numbers of people on a consistent basis contributes to developing accurate scientific discoveries that address the diverse health needs of former NFL players and others.

  

• Test My Brain
  PI: Laura Germine, PhD. Harvard Medical School and The Many Brains Project, Inc., Boston

  Test My Brain is a nonprofit research initiative that allows citizen scientists from all over the world to contribute to brain science and learn more about themselves. Through our website, TestMyBrain.org, we provide people with measurement tools that allow them to understand more about their own cognitive functions, while helping us understand more about the mind and brain. Come and test yourself!

  

Expo for Research Teams

• C3 Pro
  

  C3-PRO: Consent, Contact, and Community framework for Patient Reported Outcomes is a “backend” connecting any ResearchKit app to a widely-used clinical research IT infrastructure called i2b2. C3-PRO relies FHIR (Fast Health Interoperability Resources). We are making C3-PRO available to the broader research community to be used with their ResearchKit apps and also integrating with ResearchStack.

  

• Center For Open Science Cos
  

  COS is a non-profit technology company providing free and open services to increase inclusivity and transparency of research. We support shifting incentives and practices to align more closely with scientific values. Our mission is to increase openness, integrity, and reproducibility of scientific research. COS pursues this mission by building communities around open science practices, supporting metascience research, and developing and maintaining free, open source software tools. The Open Science Framework (OSF), COS’s flagship product, is a web application that connects and supports the research workflow, enabling scientists to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their research and increase the inclusivity.

  

• Cielo
  

  CIELO provides members of the research community an open-source/-standards “app store” for data analysis and software sharing. The CIELO site provides a place to access useful applications for health research, contribute your own work in a citable, reusable format, and build and collaborate in a virtual environment by extending or assembling modules in new analytical “pipelines.” The project embodies the principles of open science and aims to establish a well-functioning community and platform that will reduce time and cost of research while enhancing the reproducibility and transparency of data analysis.

  

• Connected And Open Research Ethics Core
  

  The Connected and Open Research Ethics (CORE) aims to establish a set of guidelines to foster the ethical design and review of studies that use Mobile Imaging, pervasive Sensing, Social media, and Tracking (MISST) Technologies. Our goal is to build a web-based platform that will support access to resources designed to assist researchers in developing ethically sound studies and assist IRBs in the evaluation of studies that use MISST technologies.

  

• Dnasimple
  

  DNAsimple. A place for DNA exchange between researchers and all of us. Saliva donors get paid for each sample they provide. Researchers find the population they need quickly and easily.

  

• Health Data Exploration Project
  

  HDE is paving the way for using personal data for the public good. Our core staff and our network members are producing new knowledge, new approaches, and new technologies. These projects demonstrate the value of using personal data in research and create reusable templates, policies, and infrastructures for using new forms of data.

  

• Involution Studios
  

  Involution Studios is a Boston user experience design firm. The software we design helps progressive healthcare companies create new markets and exploit future tech.

  

• Lifemap
  

  LifeMap Solutions empowers mobile health studies and accelerates translation of their findings into innovative digital therapeutics. We partner our experience of consumer behavior, app analytics, and design with Mount Sinai’s world-leading expertise in health research to conduct the Asthma Health ResearchKit study. Large-scale patient-directed studies which capture real-world outcomes in real time will reveal trends and effects that were once invisible in small-scale traditional asthma research studies. Come talk to us about how we can work together to use mobile technology to better understand and improve health.

  

• Many Brains Project
  

  The Many Brains Project is a nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating research on the mind and brain by developing research tools that directly address the needs of patients and participants. We develop state-of-the-art, digital, open source tools for assessing cognition and brain health, all validated through our research platform TestMyBrain.org. You can participate in our interactive lab here at the GET conference, or come talk to us if you would like to know how to incorporate mobile / web-based, participant-centered cognitive testing into your work.

  

• Mind Of The Universe
  

  The Mind of the Universe is an international television series, a global open source knowledge project and a web based educational about the rapid evolution of our knowledge. It has unique patronage from UNESCO. The Mind of the Universe explores the human destiny through the eyes of the greatest thinkers and scientists of our time, e.g. George Church, Juan Maldecena, Joanna Aizenberg and Segenet Kelemu. The Mind of the Universe is a non commercial broadcasting en web project initiated by the VPRO Dutch public television organization.

  

• Mozilla Science Lab
  

  Mozilla Science Lab (a program of the Mozilla Foundation) works to make research more collaborative, accessible, and usable. We do this by empowering the next generation of leaders through fellowships and mentorship, facilitating project-based learning around open data and open source, and supporting and advocating for a growing community of researchers working openly. We believe a community of peers working, learning and building together are necessary to further research online.

  

• Open Humans
  

  Open Humans can support your research study in several ways. First, some Open Humans members generously choose to publicly share their data – a potentially valuable resource for you. Second, we can enable studies to work directly with Open Humans members to receive data (private as well as public) and enable additional follow-up research (e.g. surveys or new samples). Governance and technology to enable data sharing can be a challenge! We have know-how, tools and experience that can help you do this.

  

• Ovation
  

  Ovation focuses on removing software barriers to doing great science. Leveraging deep experience in design and development of software solutions for scientific partners, Ovation helps researchers and collaborators find a better way to structure, manage, annotate and exchange data. A rich history in neurobiology and genetics and a diverse set of interests motivates the team at Ovation to drive progress in life science research through innovative new tools such as our next-generation scientific data-layer-as-a-service. Ovation is taking a fresh approach to helping scientists and service labs capture knowledge, collaborate efficiently and visualize the flow of their data throughout a project’s lifecycle.

  

• Parametric Human Project
  

  The Parametric Human Project is a collaborative international not-for-profit effort of scientists working together to greatly advance the state-of-the-art for medical research through the development of a digital human model that can serve as the basis for a vast collection of innovative applications. Our goal is to create a complete morphological and physiological multiscale human model through the systematic modeling of all aspects of human properties and processes.

  

• Peer
  

  The Platform for Engaging Everyone Responsibly (PEER), from partners Genetic Alliance and Private Access, enables participants and their caregivers to share clinical information, medical records, and even genomic information - all within an environment that provides the look and feel of familiar, trusted communities under access-permission rules defined by the participants themselves. PEER provides data-entry, data-query, and privacy-management services that are accessed through standard application programming interfaces (APIs).

  

• Proofpilot
  

  ProofPilot enables your ultimate research goals. It allows you to design and automate the most complex studies with a fraction of the time and budget. Leverage best practices from the consumer sector to recruit and engage participants. Launch your study without any IT professionals. ProofPilot sends you alerts of potentially significant data so you can focus your analysis. ProofPilot is powerful enough for career researchers - and easy to use for tech novices. Join us to create a renaissance in evidence-based knowledge on human health.

  

• Researchstack
  

  ResearchStack makes it easy to build research study apps on Android, as well as adapt existing iOS ResearchKit(TM) apps to Android. ResearchStack provides an opinionated framework for informing participants and establishing consent, capturing participant survey data and other mobile sensor inputs, and securely managing data in a way that provides a straightforward pathway for securing IRB approval. The software is open source, community-driven, and maintained by Cornell Tech’s Small Data Lab and Open mHealth in collaboration with touchlab.

  

• Smart Health It
  

  SMART Health IT is the interface between healthcare data and innovation. The goal is audacious: an innovative app developer can write an app once, and expect that it will run anywhere in the health care system. Further, that one app should be readily substitutable for another. When apps are substitutable, they compete with each other, which drives up quality and down price. The project includes the SMART Gallery, API, Genomics API and the SMART CDS-Hooks decision support framework.

  

Who else is coming?

See who is coming to this year’s event. We’ll update the list every couple of days