Projects

Project website: synthesis.bio

Synthesis.bio is a tool developed by the Digitalis Commons to help people stay current with scientifically-informed news about health. It does this by intelligently aggregating links that are currently being discussed on public forums by influential thinkers. 

The goal of Synthesis.bio is to help busy problem solvers in biotech / biopharma / medtech / healthcare / data keep track of what is happening in their industry’s public sphere. It is designed to give people who are “time poor” a quick overview of what is happening, without the need to manually curate individual information sources. 

Synthesis.bio is based on the Open Fuego software originally developed by Harvard’s Nieman Lab. Coming soon: we are cleaning up our code and will publish our updates in the Digitalis Commons GitHub Repo.

Project website: dimesociety.org

The Digital Medicine (DiMe) Society is a professional society for practitioners of digital medicine. Although organizations to serve companies in this field exist, none currently serve the individuals working to make digital medicine part of the standard of care. The computer scientists, healthcare providers, engineers, behavioral scientists, ethicists, clinical researchers, data scientists, and epidemiologists who are developing software and algorithms that measure, diagnose, and treat disease lack a convening body to support their work and collaboration. To meet this need, DiMe was born. 

DiMe Society creates a community of experts centered on the concept of driving scientific progress and the wide acceptance of digital medicine as a professional discipline capable of significantly impacting public health through improved health measurement, diagnosis and treatment. Unlike the broader field of digital health and wellness, digital medicine practitioners are committed to conducting rigorous randomized, controlled clinical trials for their products with the belief that this field demands the very highest level of evidence. Composed of members ranging in skills and experience, the society empowers individuals within this evolving community to work in multi-stakeholder projects where members build and maintain bridges across tech, biotech, clinical medicine, regulatory, payers, patients, and related fields. Essential to this role is serving as a north star to ethically guide the adoption of such technologies by creating, maintaining and disseminating standards of ethical conduct in digital medicine. 

Through conferences and roundtables for in-person interaction as well as a strong digital community operating via appropriate communication channels, DiMe provides the means to meet, learn and share the results of the digital medicine community. 

The Digitalis Commons is excited to serve on the society’s scientific advisory board as well as having been a founding financial sponsor for the society. 

DiMe officially launched in May of 2019. You can read the press release, have a look at its first publication, and follow Dime on Twitter and LinkedIn. To become a member, please visit dimesociety.org. 

On September 12, 2019, the Digitalis Commons helped to convene and host a group of experts, in conjunction with Sage Bionetworks, at the New York Genome Center to explore the topic of conducting health research on mobile devices and wearables. Topics explored included obtaining reliable digital measurements, design, engagement and enrollment, and technical approaches for app development, all through the lens of the ethical, legal and social implications of this work.

Video highlights of the event are below:

Andy Coravos, Keynote / Digital Medicine: Clinical Validity, Human Factors and Ethical Research

Megan Doer / Sage's Elements of Informed Consent 

Vanessa Barone / Privacy Toolkit: The Role of Design in Defining New "Rules" for Data Privacy in mHealth Research"

Woody MacDuffie / Design Manual: Living Design System to Help Researchers Design Studies

Abhi Pratap / Participant Retention in Digital Health Studies

We'd like to thank all the participants and speakers who helped make this day a success: Vanessa Barone, Andrea Coravos, Megan Doerr, Maria Ebling, Deborah Estrin, Adrian Gropper, Mike Kellen, JP Pollak, Abhi Pratep, Mark Rothstein, & John Wilbanks.