After the successful Kick-Off meeting in Newcastle in February, the IDEA-FAST team worked hard to make the vision of the feasibility study come to life. Thanks to the device testing team, we were able to agree on the most promising devices to be included in this study in the beginning of April. Within four to five weeks, each participant will test:
- Six wearables
- Two stationary at-home devices
- Two phone apps
This allows us to get plenty of valuable digital measures including:
- movement data,
- digital social interaction data,
- and physiological data such as heart rate and brain waves (electroencephalogram)
In combination with fatigue and sleep disturbance reports from the participants, this study will allow us to judge which of the tested digital parameters are the most reliable and relevant for our larger validation study that will start in 2022.
The feasibility study sites in Newcastle, Kiel, Rotterdam and Münster, and the technical teams, agreed on a common protocol for the feasibility study. As of today, three of the four sites have submitted the study protocol to their local ethics committee. The site in Kiel has already received positive feedback from their committee, so formally they are ready to start.
As all ongoing projects, also the feasibility study was and continues to be affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, our device hub in Newcastle was one of the more affected sites, so our team in Newcastle had to work extra hard to make sure that, despite all the restrictions, devices and support material could be delivered in time. Due to a tremendous group effort, we managed to get the feasibility study devices shipped just in time for the study start in July. Thankfully, Kiel in Northern Germany is currently one of the less affected places, so we will be starting with the first participant in Kiel. Thanks to many emails and video conferences between the clinical team in Kiel and Newcastle, the device team, our device and app partners and the database team, the Kiel team was able to successfully test most devices already. Currently, the last device checks are performed in Kiel. We are looking forward to welcoming our first participant in July!
