The Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is funding the project, which will include collecting information from four cohorts of participants over a two-year period. Participants are recruited for 12 weeks at a time and are asked to record their symptoms daily.
“This is a huge opportunity for us to get a sense as to whether or not phones could basically become a personal screener for an illness without having to go to a drive-in screening clinic or to a hospital to figure out if a pandemic is blooming,” said Patricia Arean, PhD, a psychiatry and behavioral sciences professor at UW Medicine.
Despite being in the middle of a pandemic, Dr. Arean said it’s a good time to collect data and build out the predictive algorithm from the app so the researchers can start to test the technology in the fall and winter.
The app is called the Health and Injury Prediction and Prevention Using Complex Reasoning and Analytic Techniques Integrated on a Cellphone App, or HIPPOCRATIC app.
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