07 Mar, 2023
Focus on women’s health has increased a great deal in recent years, and a collaboration between Labfront and Garmin Health is helping to support this research trend. As part of the joint Women’s Health Research Initiative, a research grant will be awarded to five researchers working on women’s health globally. Each grant will include five Garmin wearables and one year use of the Labfront platform to conduct a research project.
Researchers can start applying for this grant on March 8th, 2023 (International Women’s Day). The deadline to apply is May 28th (International Day of Action for Women’s Health). The initiative aims to help bridge the knowledge gap in women’s health while working to improve outcomes for women all over the world.
There are significant differences in how women and men experience health conditions — for conditions common to both sexes (like heart disease and dementia) and those unique to women (like cervical, ovarian and uterine cancers). The majority of our knowledge of health and disease is based on decades of male human and animal research. It wasn’t until 1993 that the U.S. FDA reversed a 1977 recommendation that premenopausal women be excluded from clinical studies1. This failure to consider sex and gender in health research has resulted in a gap in knowledge and underfunding of women’s health research.
According to the WHAM research collaborative, only 12% of Alzheimer’s disease research focuses on women, even though two-thirds (66%) of all Alzheimer’s patients are women1, and although cardiovascular disease is the number-one cause of death for women in the United States, only one-third of patients enrolled in clinical trials are female2. Women experience 50-75% more adverse side effects from drugs3 and are more likely to die prematurely from preventable illnesses4.
By investing in women’s health research, findings can lead to more practical applications and policy, with significant advancements in women’s health outcomes. Labfront’s global all-in-one research solution for real-world data capture advocates for better health for all, supporting women’s health as part of its social responsibility.
As part of the collaboration, Labfront will use the Garmin Health Companion SDK to provide researchers access to configurable logged data such as accelerometer data or beat-to-beat intervals. The chosen Garmin devices will be used as powerful data collection tools, capturing real-world data such as heart rate5, heart rate variability, step count, Pulse Ox, sleep, stress and more from participants. Combining the strengths of Garmin and Labfront will enhance the experience for researchers and make it easier than ever to collect and analyse physiological data.
Dr. Andrew Ahn, Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and Chief Medical/Science Officer at Labfront said, “We are excited to work with Garmin Health to give researchers access to high-quality sensor data so they can better understand the diverse health experiences of women. By utilising wearables in this way, we have the chance to make novel discoveries and insights that will ultimately benefit everyone.”
The collaboration between Labfront and Garmin brings together some of the industry’s best wearable devices with Labfront’s platform, designed specifically for the unique needs of researchers and organisations. In addition to the Women’s Health Research Initiative grant, Labfront has several ongoing research projects using Garmin Health APIs and Garmin devices, which can be found at https://www.labfront.com/case-studies.
1https://thewhamreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/TheWHAMReport_ADRD.pdf
2https://whamnow.org/#collaborative
3Do women have more adverse drug reactions? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11770389/
4Government of Canada, Cervical Cancer. (2017) Available at https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/chronic-diseases/cancer/cervical-cancer.html
