Research Tools

In addition to the development and marketing of interventions to improve health behaviors, CHIAT scientists and staff are also engaged in developing tools useful for clinical and health behavior researchers. Supporting the efforts of researchers keeps CHIAT involved at the forefront of discovery of new ways to improve individual and population health. Two projects currently underway include –

e/Balance™ - A Tool for Real Time Energy Balance Research

This Small Business Innovation Research grant project, funded by the NCI, developed a prototype of a portable energy balance assessment and intervention tool supported through data capture and feed-back in real time. It was being built around a cell phone client and a web based server architecture. Software was designed to be adaptable to the specific needs of two groups of researchers: a) those engaged in individual-level cognitive and behavioral intervention research; and b) researchers involved in active living and food environment research.

The Company is currently initiating usability, acceptability, reliability, validity testing of the tool, as well as ongoing expansion of eBalance features and devices. In its final form, the tool will support self-report and objective measurement of individual-level energy balance data (e.g. physical activity, heart rate, sedentary behavior, dietary intake, and psychosocial data). It will also support capture and use of environment-based data, in this case global positioning system (GPS) data that can be matched to geographical information system (GIS) data for purposes of environmental tracking and prompting. Subsequent versions of this system are envisioned to be capable of collecting environmental data through such technologies as bar codes, RFID, or other technologies. Once its utility has been adequately empirically demonstrated, the e/Balance tool will be available to researchers on a licensing basis, with CHIAT offering optional tailoring to the researcher’s specific needs. In the meantime, inquiries from energy balance researchers interested in pilot testing the tool are welcomed.


Standards-based Platform for Energetics Analysis & Research (SPEAR)

SPEAR is a set of software tools specifically created to collect, store, and distribute energetics data from existing and future bioengineering sensors and devices. SPEAR will be built upon the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC) standards that are currently gaining increasing acceptance by both the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Contract research organizations (CROs). CDISC Operational Data Modeling (ODM) provides data exchange standards for specifying the protocols and data to be collected in clinical trials and for reporting the collected data. In partnership with Digital Infuzion, Inc. we are building and pilot testing an extension to the CDISC ODM standard that will support real-time energetics research. The extension will develop a framework for specifying, collecting, monitoring, analyzing, and transferring data related to recurring energetics events useful for a wide variety of researchers.