Introduction: Future digital health research hinges on methodologies to conduct remote clinical assessments and in-home monitoring. The Collaborative Aging Research Using Technology (CART) initiative was introduced to establish a digital technology research platform that could widely assess activity in the homes of diverse cohorts of older adults and detect meaningful change longitudinally. This paper reports on the built end-to-end design of the CART platform, its functionality, and the resulting research capabilities. Methods: CART platform development followed a principled design process aiming for scalability, use case flexibility, longevity, and data privacy protection while allowing sharability. The platform, comprising ambient technology, wearables, and other sensors, was deployed in participants’ homes to provide continuous, long-term (months to years), and ecologically valid data. Data gathered from CART homes were sent securely to a research server for analysis and future data sharing. Results: The CART system was created, iteratively tested, and deployed to 232 homes representing four diverse cohorts (African American, Latinx, low-income, and predominantly rural-residing veterans) of older adults (n = 301) across the USA. Multiple measurements of wellness such as cognition (e.g., mean daily computer use time = 160–169 min), physical mobility (e.g., mean daily transitions between rooms = 96–155), sleep (e.g., mean nightly sleep duration = 6.3–7.4 h), and level of social engagement (e.g., reports of overnight visitors = 15–45%) were collected across cohorts. Conclusion: The CART initiative resulted in a minimally obtrusive digital health-enabled system that met the design principles while allowing for data capture over extended periods and can be widely used by the research community. The ability to monitor and manage health digitally within the homes of older adults is an important alternative to in-person assessments in many research contexts. Further advances will come with wider, shared use of the CART system in additional settings, within different disease contexts, and by diverse research teams.

中文翻译：

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使用技术倡议的协同老化研究：一个开放、可共享、与技术无关的研究社区平台

简介：未来的数字健康研究取决于进行远程临床评估和家庭监测的方法。引入了利用技术进行协作老龄化研究 (CART) 计划，以建立一个数字技术研究平台，该平台可以广泛评估不同老年人群的家庭活动，并纵向检测有意义的变化。本文报告了 CART 平台的内置端到端设计、其功能以及由此产生的研究能力。方法：CART 平台开发遵循旨在实现可扩展性、用例灵活性、寿命和数据隐私保护的原则设计过程，同时允许共享。该平台由环境技术、可穿戴设备和其他传感器组成，部署在参与者家中，以提供持续、长期（数月至数年）和生态有效的数据。从 CART 家庭收集的数据被安全地发送到研究服务器以进行分析和未来的数据共享。结果：CART 系统被创建、迭代测试并部署到 232 个家庭，这些家庭代表了美国四个不同的老年人群（非裔美国人、拉丁裔、低收入和主要居住在农村的退伍军人）（n = 301）。多项健康测量，例如认知（例如，平均每日计算机使用时间 = 160-169 分钟）、身体活动能力（例如，平均每日房间之间的转换 = 96-155）、睡眠（例如，平均每晚睡眠时间 = 6.3-7.4 h) 和社会参与水平（例如，过夜访客的报告 = 15-45%）是跨队列收集的。结论：CART 倡议产生了一个最小干扰的数字健康系统，该系统符合设计原则，同时允许长时间捕获数据，并且可以被研究界广泛使用。在许多研究环境中，在老年人家中以数字方式监控和管理健康的能力是面对面评估的重要替代方案。随着 CART 系统在其他环境中、不同疾病背景下以及不同研究团队中更广泛、共享的使用，进一步的进步将随之而来。