# Open Tools for Self-Tracking, Self Experimentation, and Patient-Provider Collaboration in Symptom Self-Management and Clinical Care

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON · 2020 · $319,321

## Abstract

Project Summary / Abstract
Despite strong and growing interest in self-tracking data to capture a more complete, accurate, and longer-term
understanding of an individual's health (e.g., activity / symptom journals, wearable sensor data), patients and
health providers struggle to gain insights from such data. Technologies often fail to deliver benefits, as people
are limited by data silos, abandon tracking due its burdens, fail to track potential symptom triggers or relevant
context, and reach flawed conclusions due to a lack of scientific rigor. Providers often question data, lack tools
to analyze it, and feel unequipped to interpret it. When people seek assistance from providers, commercial
self-tracking tools generally lack support for sharing and patient-provider collaboration in analysis and interpretation.
The long-term goal is to empower patients and providers to leverage the unprecedented potential of self-tracking
data in moving from population-level understanding to personalized insights in self-management and clinical care.
The overall objective in this application is: (1) to develop open tools that support innovation and research in
self-tracking for self-management and clinical care, and (2) to inform, develop, and evaluate these tools with
patients and providers seeking personalized insights through self-tracking data in irritable bowel syndrome, chronic
headaches, and juvenile idiopathic arthritis. In the five specific aims of the research: (1) Proposed open tools
will support the end-to-end process of self-tracking, from collecting to managing to interpreting many types of
self-tracked health data. (2) Proposed self-tracking applications and underlying tools will be informed, developed,
and evaluated in participatory research with patients and providers, including focus groups, technology probes,
and pilot studies with patients and providers. (3) Proposed tool support for self-experimentation will be developed,
helping patients use data to move from population-level understanding (e.g., that caffeine can trigger symptoms)
to individualized understanding (e.g., whether caffeine appears to cause this individual patient’s symptoms), as
informed, developed, and evaluated in participatory research with patients and providers. (4) Proposed tool support
for patient-provider collaboration using self-tracked health data will be developed, supporting end-to-end
collaboration in planning, collecting, analyzing, and interpreting self-tracked health data, as informed, developed,
and evaluated in participatory research with patients and providers. (5) Proposed design patterns and underlying
open tools will support extension of these innovations to additional health contexts. The approach is innovative
in extensive participatory research with patients and providers examining effective uses of self-tracked health data,
in development of self-tracking designs in the contexts of irritable bowel syndrome, chronic headaches, and
juvenile idiopathic ar...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9932490
- **Project number:** 5R01LM012810-03
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
- **Principal Investigator:** James A Fogarty
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $319,321
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-09-05 → 2022-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9932490

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9932490, Open Tools for Self-Tracking, Self Experimentation, and Patient-Provider Collaboration in Symptom Self-Management and Clinical Care (5R01LM012810-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9932490. Licensed CC0.

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