What is the purpose of the project?

Our bodies experience changes throughout the day, week, month, or year. Many of these changes are cyclic, meaning they repeat regularly over time. For example, our body typically experiences substantial changes in breathing rate, temperature, and heart rate every night when we fall asleep. These changes occur as part of our circadian rhythm, but there are also other more subtle rhythms that are of importance to our health and wellbeing, some occur multiple times a day (known as ultradian rhythms) and other over weeks or months (infradian rhythms). We want to develop new ways of capturing and studying these rhythms in real-life conditions using wearable sensors.

Who we are looking for? (Eligibility)

We are looking for volunteers to wear our sensors. Most people can volunteer as long as they are 18+, are in good health, and are able to wear some wearable sensors.

Concretely, we will be asking you to confirm the following to be eligible:

That you are 18+
That you do not have any issues with wearing a smartwatch daily during the study period of 4 week
That you are OK to receive optional daily questionnaire prompts on your mobile phone

If you have any minor conditions that have been well-managed for over one year and do not impact your quality of life overall (e.g. taking statins to manage cholesterol, but otherwise healthy) you are welcome to participate. If in doubt, please contact us. Below, in the wearable sensor sections, we also provide links to the information sheets for each device, if you want to make sure you can wear them.

If you are planning to go travelling or have other major (disruptive) events during the study period, this is also not a problem. You will have the option to tell us about them, if you want to. Part of the goal of our study is to capture modern life factors as realistically as possible.

What will happen during the study?

You will be enrolled to use different wearable sensors over a four week period.
This will begin with a visit to Newcastle University where we will show you how to use the sensor devices and explain how they work. We will provide instructions for how and when to use them.
This will also include installing some apps on your phone. These include companion apps for collecting data from each wearable device, and a daily questionnaire app. If you do not have a smart phone, the study team can provide you with one, please let us know at sign-up.
You will then be able to take the sensor devices away with you. Please follow the instructions for their use as best you can.