Activinsights announce a solution for all Actiwatch users

Activinsights are pleased to announce an instant solution for all sleep and Actiwatch users.

Sleep researchers, clinicians and practitioners can now collect high resolution raw data from the GENEActiv and continue to use the Actiware software for analysis. Activinsights are releasing the capability to turn the GENEActiv .bin files into .AWD files. These .AWD files can then be entered into the existing Actiware software for users to continue to generate double plotted sleep graphs and manipulate data in the way they have always been used to.

The GENEActiv .bin file to .AWD files conversion is an instant solution for anyone interested in objective sleep measurement with actigraphy and beyond. Furthermore, the collection of high-resolution, raw data with the GENEActiv provides users with the additional benefit of future proofing the data set collected. This enables researchers to continue to apply novel analysis techniques to the unfiltered raw data in the future, removes any limitations against black-box algorithms and increases the value of the data collected for future research capabilities. The GENEActiv provides backward capability with Actiware and enables users to use any system going forward.

Please see our library of over 130 sleep publications. For more information and to discuss our sleep services in more detail please contact Raggy Bains raggyb@lees125.sg-host.com or Stephanie Sargeant stephanies@lees125.sg-host.com.

Activinsights Feature in the DIT UK Digital Health Playbook 2023

Activinsights Feature in the Department for International Trade's 2023 UK Digital Health Playbook

By Dr Raghbir Bains, Commercial Director

Thrilled to see Activinsights Ltd featured in the new Department for International Trade (DIT) #UKDigitalHealth Playbook - 2023 Edition.

Digital Health is rightly seen as the answer to many of the challenges facing global healthcare. The role of digital technology in realising the dream of accessible, affordable, and sustainable care has grown across the entire range of health economies in not only serving current needs, but in building the basis for the healthcare of the future: personalised, digital by default and truly patient centric.

The innovations highlighted in the Playbook can offer support to healthcare in a variety of ways from solutions such as from Activinsights to support people at home with self-care apps and wearable technology which all will help transform healthcare, particularly as the Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated the tremendous potential of digital transformation.

Activinsights is featured under the Remote and Virtual Care category, the wearable technology enabling to monitor patients remotely and maintaining the ability to act fast. These digital technology solutions are interventions that can be initiated by a physician and linked to a clinical care pathway. It differs from self-care solutions, which are driven by the empowered citizen. This a UK solution which allows healthcare providers to reduce risk, cost, and readmissions and demands on your health system, while improving the patient experience, by empowering teams to safely monitor, manage and engage patients at home.

Activinsights is a digital health company that specialises in the objective measurement of physical behaviours and lifestyle. Our technologies are used worldwide within the clinical trials, health management and research markets to provide accurate and continuous monitoring of lifestyle outside of the clinic environment. We develop novel health measures from data collected by our own professional wearables within a scalable global and secure infrastructure.

Time for Digital Selection Biomarkers

By Arthur Combs, Senior Clinical Advisor

Did you know that the use of selection biomarkers in clinical development improves the success rate in every phase (I-III)? And that use of selection biomarkers improves the overall success from Phase I through regulatory approval more than 3-fold? Examples include using tumour markers to select patients for cancer therapy trials or knowing the ejection fraction (EF) for heart failure patients since those with preserved EF behave and respond differently from those with reduced EF.

Unfortunately, many patient selection processes are dependent on an overarching inclusive diagnosis, a subjective rating scale or both. These are opportunities for the use of actigraphy to objectively and precisely characterize the functional status of study candidates. Oncology, neurodegenerative diseases, and many others depend on subjective rating scales for patient selection. For example, oncology subjects are often selected based on an the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Score (ECOG) score.

This score characterizes the ability of a subject to perform daily activities and any restrictions in place. Clinical development studies often select ECOG subjects judged to be ECOG 0, 1 or 2 to ensure that a subject is able to tolerate the study therapy. But performance and functional data from wearable technologies show that what were thought to be homogeneous [ECOG] groups with a given score, in actuality are groups that demonstrate significantly heterogeneity in their total activity, step counts, stairs climbed and other actigraphy metrics.

It is time to consider true functional status as a digital biomarker of patients’ suitability for a given trial. Given the benefit of using selection biomarkers in clinical development, the development and application of digital selection biomarkers through use of wearable sensors and functional assessment in real-world settings could significantly improve both the efficiency and success of clinical development trials. This is especially true in conditions where the selection of study subjects is based on broad diagnosis, subjective classification, surveys and patient-reported outcomes.

Launch of the UK Digital Health Playbook

Activinsights are delighted to be part of the launch of the 2023 edition Department for International Trade’s UK Digital Health Playbook.

Digital technology has a significant role to play in bridging the gap around health inequalities. As we move out of the pandemic and into the recovery phase, hospitals and health systems need a well-defined approach in digital globally.

The UK’s Playbook features 200 UK innovators who can provide solutions for all of today’s healthcare challenges in digital health.

This means that Activinsights has been recognised as one of the UK's top innovators in the digital health space!

Our Commercial Director, Raggy Bains, was pleased to attend the launch event in London on 19th October.

You can download your copy of the UK Digital Health Playbook and find out more about this campaign on their website.

Activinsights to Become Digital Solutions Collaborator for new DiME Project

Activinsights are pleased to announce their involvement as a Digital Solutions Collaborator in a new physical activity project with the Digital Medicine Society (DiME). The project will see Activinsights playing a fundamental part in the development of a core set of digital measures for physical activity that are accepted within the industry.

Measures of physical activity are essential to health that they are emerging as the 6th vital sign for patients. The outcomes of this project will help to better inform decisions about patient care, research, and public health policy across disease areas. By taking an omni-therapeutic approach, we can reduce time and risk, speeding the development of breakthrough therapies for all patients to market.

As a Digital Solution Collaborator, Activinsights will play a critical supporting role, contributing throughout the project team’s process, providing strategic input during multi-stakeholder events and serving as usability testers and early adopters to the core digital measures set.

Dr Raghbir Bains, Activinsights’ Commercial Director also expressed his delight in this new partnership, commenting “We are very excited about this collaboration and the opportunity to work with DiME. They are uniquely positioned to focus the industry’s attention on the core set of digital clinical measures for physical activity to speed the development of the most valuable measures to improve clinical research and patient care. This will be of huge value to clinicians and researchers as they assess patient behaviours.”

Candice Taguibao, Program Lead at Digital Medicine Society also commented, "We are proud that Activinsights has joined this extraordinary and innovative collaboration. Right now, money, time, and effort are spent figuring out what to measure - we have around 80 unique endpoints for physical activity in DiMe’s crowdsourced, living Library of Digital Endpoints. Still, there aren’t even close to 80 different features of physical activity in daily life. We need to pivot to focus on developing the tools and therapeutics needed to bring added value to patients, caregivers, researchers, and product developers."

Find out more about this project.

Digital Biomarkers: The Future is Here!

By Bill Hogan, CEO

A quick visit to the US National Library of Medicine and specifically ClinicalTrials.gov and you can read the following…

“In a clinical trial, participants receive specific interventions according to the research plan or protocol created by the research team. These interventions may be medical products, such as drugs or devices; procedures; or changes to participants’ behaviour such as diet. Clinical trials may compare a new medical approach to a standard one that is already available, to a placebo that contains no active ingredients, or to no intervention. Some clinical trials compare interventions that are already available to each other.

When a new product or approach is being studied, it is not usually known whether it will be helpful, harmful, or no different than available alternatives. Investigators try to determine the safety and efficacy of the intervention by measuring certain outcomes in the participants.”

So far, so good! Have you ever wondered though how detailed, thorough, or relevant is the data generated as described above. Certainly, the recent global pandemic has seen a very significant shift towards decentralised and virtual clinical trials. Under-pinning these shifts has been the proliferation of hardware and software that enables data collection remotely.

Frequent, objective and sensitive assessments are critical to measuring health trends and determine the efficacy of new therapeutics. Traditionally, intermittent clinical observations at long intervals were the standard accepted practice. Throughout the pandemic we saw increased validation and verification of continuous monitoring. Wearable accelerometers can continuously capture data to assess health and today we are seeing the rise of digital biomarkers as a result.

Real-world Raw Data

Real-world data derived from objective raw data is key to this continued development. Not all devices will deliver raw data! The ability to realise primary and secondary digital clinical end-points is built upon the availability of raw data and ability to translate the data analytics into digital clinical end points and health biomarkers.

The Digital Medicine Society (DiMe) is a global non-profit organisation and a base for the global digital medicine community. Their aim is to drive scientific progress and broad acceptance in digital medicine to enhance public health. We are about to work closely with DiMe on a project to define an optimized set of core digital clinical measures that address patient, care-partner, and clinical unmet need for aspects of health that span multiple therapeutic areas in physical activity - a domain where digital clinical measurement capabilities are already well advanced.

We are very much looking forward to the next phase of our collaboration with DiMe.