Health4Life Tracker App

Helps researchers collect information about your phone use and health behaviours

It automatically collects research-quality smartphone sensor and usage data from participants in research studies. For example, it may collect information about your location (using phone GPS) and how much you move (using phone accelerometer). The Health4Life Tracker app may also monitor how much you use your phone for calling and texting and keep track of the people you communicate with. Importantly, it never records the names or phone numbers of anyone you communicate with. While it can tell if you call the same person more than once, it does not know who that person is. The app also does not record the content of your text messages or phone calls. The Health4Life Tracker App may keep track of the different Wi-Fi networks and Bluetooth devices around your phone, but the names of those networks are replaced with random codes. The app may also ask you to fill out short surveys about your health behaviours.

The Health4Life Tracker App has been developed by a team of researchers from the Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, the University of Newcastle and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre (a Harvard Medical School Teaching Hospital). It was built by Netfront Pty Ltd, in Sydney Australia.

The Health4Life tracker app is based upon the Beiwe passive monitoring system which was conceived and designed by Dr. Jukka-Pekka 'JP' Onnela at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and co-investigator Dr John Torous https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4873624/). Development of the Beiwe system and data analysis software was funded by NIH grant 1DP2MH103909-01 to Dr. Onnela. Beiwe was originally built by Zagaran, Inc., in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In order to use this app, you need to have been invited to participate in a study and been given a user ID and registration code.