Oxford Brookes Student Stress Study

Goal/Objective:

Adolescence is a critical metamorphosis period. This period coincides with the transition into early adulthood and for many, entry into postsecondary education. The transition to university comes with several stress-related factors including separation from family, making new social connections, taking on increased responsibility for lifestyle choices and self-regulation. The aim of this study is to develop a system for students to monitor their physiological signals, to learn things about themselves, and from there to empower student communities to help each other. This system is aimed at enabling students to stay in tune with themselves to maintain good mental health during this period of transition and into their adult years.

Description of the study:

The first phase to enable this study is the development of a new smart wristband (the Open Band Challenge) that contains the hardware for assessing physiologic signals, such as heart rate, that will enable understanding of various states of health such as mood, sleep and stress. This smart wristband is being built using open source hardware in collaboration with the Centre de Recherches Interdisciplinaires in Paris. We will also develop a smartphone app (Care for myself) that will enable the Open Band to make the data and algorithms available to the participants and qualified researchers. This will enable students to follow themselves and support others using Care for myself. Students from Oxford Brookes University will be given the Open Band device to collect stress-related objective and subjective data for 1 year. In Year 2, we will host the data collected from participating students and set up an Open Dream Challenge. This challenge allows for researchers around the world to collaborate to build the algorithms needed to use data collected from the Open Bands to track stress, mood and sleep in individuals. In Year 3, we will then provide these algorithms back to the incoming students at Oxford Brookes University (as well as other international universities) to use and optimize their functions with the aim of deploying the system globally in the following year.

Size and Timing:
Up to 100 students followed for 1-year. Launch date TBD.

Funder:
Sloane Robinson Foundation

Clinical Partner(s):
N/A

Coalition and Collaboration Partners:
Centre de Researchers Interdisciplinary, Oxford Brookes University, University of Oxford, Sage Bionetworks, Evidation