Open Band Challenge

Goal/Objective:

The wearable device market is growing and the potential use of wearables for health tracking at larger scales in digital health is much discussed. Yet, a concern is the current high cost of wearable-based devices that could catalyze existing health inequalities through lack of access and digital divides. Existing wearable device companies do not typically offer raw data to the user, and instead provide back aggregated summaries and keep algorithms hidden. The goal of the Open Band Challenge is to develop a low cost, fully open-source wearable device with open firmware for a diverse set of physiological signals.

Description of the project:

An open source wristband (the Open Band) is being built using open source hardware in collaboration with Dr Yuntao Wang at Tsinghua University. The wristband is being built to track an evolving set of semi-continuous physiologic signals such as heart rate, body temperature and activity on through to clinical symptoms. We plan in this phase of the project to assess the quality and validity of the Open Band against the gold standard, the Vivalink VV350 ECG monitor and other correlated variables (motion, location, PPG, SPO2 and body temperature). In the current pilot phase, we are conducting early development testing by collecting data across activities such as sitting, walking, cycling, and running. This allows us to evaluate performance in both resting and active movement states.

Size and Timing:
The Open Band Study was launched in October 2023 at Oxford, and transitioned to Tsinghua University in 2025

Funder:
4YouandMe pilot funds - looking for Co-funder

Clinical Partner(s):

Coalition and Collaboration Partners:
Tsinghua, Sage Bionetworks