MORE

Modular Open Research Platform for Digital Health:
An infrastructure to foster data-driven innovation

Description

It can be a very costly, time consuming, and challenging to set up and manage studies with research participants that run over a longer duration and intend to observe people in their daily living, such as studies about the effects of behavior change interventions in digital health. Nowadays, such studies commonly include the capturing of data from sensing devices, as well as capturing questionnaires or survey data.

The Modular Open Research Platform [MORE] makes such studies much more efficient, affordable, and scalable to run. It consists of a study manager web application, in which researchers can configure studies and the data that is to be collected, as well as a study companion app that is available for iOS and Android, and which guides and supports participants throughout the procedures of a longer-term study that accompanies them in their daily living. The study manager easily allows for configuring multiple study arms, populating them with participants, then defining observations that need to be collected — such as capturing heart rate from a wearable, capturing accelerometry or GPS data from the smartphone, or integrating any questionnaire or survey that can be implemented through the popular LimeSurvey tool, which is embedded with MORE.

Picture 1: Components of the MORE platform: study management software (MORE-Configurator), modular configuration of studies (research modules), integration of smartphone and wearable sensors (REST API), native apps for Android or iOS for study participants (MORE-App), storage of large amounts of data (Time Series Database)

Features

MORE has been developed over the course of three years and has been used successfully in multiple studies. Going beyond mere study facilitation, several features set MORE apart from similar study automation tools. This includes a focus on implementing studies on personalization and adaptive interventions. To this end, data is transferred in near real-time from any participant client to the central MORE database. Here, interventions can be scheduled or evaluated based on the incoming data and assessing it against certain criteria, such as threshold heuristics. The platform then allows triggering actions, such as sending messages to study participants, or calling any functionalities that may be implemented in 3rd party applications via webhook REST/ HTTP calls.

MORE also allows integrating any additional data to the study data set during study execution, for easier management of complex study settings. This is achieved via API calls, and data can have any format. MORE offers a preview of a study that is planned at design time, investigating through calendar events which actions are scheduled on the platform, e.g. when considering measures that are to be observed at regular intervals. In addition, MORE contains simple features for data exploration once a study is executed, which is vital for researchers to rest assured that study data is collected as intended.

Exemplarische Screenshots eines ersten Prototyps für die mobile App

Picture 2: Exemplary screenshots of a first prototype of the mobile app

Next Steps

Upcoming developments for MORE include further observation modules, improved interoperability, as well as more flexible and capable alternatives for implementing adaptive interventions.

If you have any further questions, please contact us: zber.quc@yot.np.ng

For a highres version use the YouTube link below.

Cooperation and Support

The implementation takes place in cooperation with Redlink GmbH.

Further cooperation with:

Dr. Devender Kumar, University of Southern Denmark (SDU)

The development of the MORE platform was supported by the Science and Innovation Strategy Salzburg 2025 (WISS 2025) of the state of Salzburg.

The project was supported by the following organizations that intend to use the platform for their own work and contribute to the development of requirements and the platform evaluation:

Original Implementation Project for MORE as a Research Infrastructure

The goal of this 15-month project (running from 2022-02-01 to 2023-04-30) is the development of a digital infrastructure for sustainable health research with a focus on the creation and implementation of studies using digital technologies. With such a central technical infrastructure, recurring challenges – for example the integration of external devices and sensors, the collection of large amounts of data from various sources (increasingly in real time), the administration of large numbers of study participants, or compatibility with current data security standards – can be efficiently dealt with.

The MORE Platform consists of two main user-facing components: (1) a web application that allows experts in application development or healthcare to define and manage studies and evaluation processes. Study or evaluation participants then receive (2) a smartphone app (see Figure 1 for an early draft) that is automatically configured when registering for a study or evaluation in such a way that it guides participants through the procedures. In doing so it enables e. g. the collection of questionnaire responses and sensor data from wearables over longer periods of time and accompanying everyday life.

The result of the project will be an open source platform that is technologically up-to-date and easy to use. In addition to academic research facilities, the outcomes will also be available to companies and other organizations for prototyping, evaluation and further development of their products and can thus be used as a core facility for future projects in Salzburg. Hereby, the project hopes to contribute to fostering development cooperations that make Salzburg stand out in the field of digital health.

The implementation of the MORE project will (1) strengthen digitization research in healthcare, (2) create a sustainable study platform that makes it possible to demonstrate the effectiveness and safety of DH innovations, and (3) offer a future-proof technology platform as a basis for research and development. In addition to the integration of current technological developments and standards, the MORE platform has a modular architecture and can be expanded so that a wide range of functionalities can be achieved whilst also remaining flexible (see Figure 2).

The implementation of the MORE platform is realized within 6 work packages over the course of 15 months. Central characteristics of the implementation are agile project management and the active involvement of the cooperation partners. The detailed requirements for the platform are worked out and evaluated in detail using defined use cases as part of an agile, stakeholder-centric development process.