Beiwe Research Platform

About the Beiwe Research Platform

More than just an app, the Beiwe Research Platform consists of three cloud-based components for collecting data, managing studies and performing data analysis. Beiwe is currently being used in numerous studies, primarily at the Harvard Medical School teaching hospitals involving patients with psychiatric and neurological disorders, surgical patients, and patients with cancer.

Collect Data

Beiwe is available as a native app for both Android and iOS devices that connect seamlessly to the same research platform, enabling researchers to reach over 99% of smartphone users.

Manage Studies

The web-based research portal allows researchers to manage their own studies, which are securely hosted on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. Easily configure surveys, passive data collection and view summary statistics.

Perform Data Analysis

The cloud-based data analysis pipeline performs data processing and data quality checks, and it generates summary statistics of interest. New methods are actively being developed and made available.

Our Approach

Unlike the large majority of commercially available smartphone applications, Beiwe is intended for biomedical research. Our research platform collects and analyzes raw sensor and phone use data. Our initial application areas of digital phenotyping are in psychiatric, neurological, and surgical patients, where we aim to generate new outcome measures and social and behavioral biomarkers.

Open-source under the 3-clause BSD license
Infinitely scalable AWS cloud-based architecture
Smartphone app available on iOS and Android
Fully configurable data collection settings
Easy study management
Collects raw smartphone sensor and usage log data
Configuration files ensure easy and transparent reproducibility
Integrated data analysis pipeline

Using Beiwe

Investigators worldwide have three different ways of using Beiwe in their studies.

Direct Collaboration

The lab currently has limited bandwidth for new collaborations, but in this model, we create the new study on our production version of Beiwe, which we run on our lab’s AWS account, and we cover all platform costs, such as server uptime, data storage, and network traffic. These collaborations are usually funded by a joint grant.

Beiwe as a Service

In this model, we run the Beiwe study on AWS using our latest versions of the front-end, back-end, and data analysis software. This model is not a scientific collaboration between the Onnela Lab and the other group, but makes Beiwe data collection and analysis capabilities available for others. Fees are used to cover immediate costs of running the Beiwe instances and to partially cover the cost of maintenance and development.

Beiwe Open Source

The Beiwe research platform is available, under an open-source license, to investigators worldwide for free. Under this model, individuals or institutions interested in using Beiwe will use the Beiwe AMI (Amazon Machine Image) to create their own instance of Beiwe on AWS. In this model, the investigators using the open source version are responsible for all expenses. Software is provided as is.

Frequently Asked Questions

We receive a large number of inquiries about our approach and the research platform, and we attempt to address some of the most frequently asked questions here. Regarding the most frequently asked question, Beiwe is a transliteration of a Nordic goddess of sunlight and mental health. We pronounce it bee-we.

What is digital phenotyping?

We have defined digital phenotyping as the “moment-by-moment quantification of the individual-level human phenotype in situ using data from personal digital devices,” in particular smartphones. This is our definition of the concept and it highlights some of the important aspects of digital phenotyping, such as using existing personal devices rather than introducing additional instrumentation. To truly leverage moment-by-moment data collected in situ, in the wild, one must rely on the use of passive data, i.e., smartphone sensor and usage data.

Who developed Beiwe?

The Beiwe research platform has been developed by the Onnela Lab at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health by funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Specifically, the large majority of the development work has been enabled by a 2013 NIH Director’s New Innovator Award to Dr. Jukka-Pekka Onnela. The lab has worked with two different software development groups to create the front-end smartphone applications for Android and iOS devices, as well as the development of the back-end data collection system. The lab has developed the data analysis methods and data analysis pipeline internally.

What is the difference between a smartphone app and a research platform?

A smartphone app simply a software application that runs on a smartphone. The Beiwe app is just one of the three components of the Beiwe platform. The other components are the Beiwe back-end and the Beiwe data analysis pipeline. The Beiwe back-end makes use of Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing infrastructure and is used to manage studies (e.g., study creation, addition of users, regeneration of passwords) and collect data. For the latter, it uses AWS Elastic Beanstalk, which automatically handles the details of capacity provisioning and load balancing, making it essentially infinitely scalable. The data analysis pipeline performs data pre-processing, checks data quality, transforms data, carries out imputation, and computes summary statistics of interest.

Why does Beiwe collect raw data?

In short, research requires research-grade raw data. Software development kits for Android (ResearchStack, etc.) and Apple iOS (ResearchKit, HealthKit, CareKit, etc.) collect processed data summaries rather than raw sensor and phone usage data. This introduces an opaque layer between the data generating process and data analysis, making it difficult to compare data across devices or pool data across studies as the data summaries are likely different. The use of pre-defined data summaries results in a loss of information, narrowing down potential use cases of data to those conceived at the time of data collection (e.g., number of steps taken), and as such diminishes the value of data biobanking. Collection and storage of raw data makes it possible to compute any summaries of interest at a future data, thus enhancing study replicability and facilitating re-analyses of data. Downsides to collecting raw data are the large volume of data and the difficulty of keeping phone sensors awake, but both of these challenges are manageable. Raw data lets investigators ask and answer questions they care about and makes data collection and data analysis transparent.

What about reproducibility and replicability of Beiwe studies?

Only 6% of biomedical studies have been found to be completely reproducible (Prinz et al, 2011). From this point of view, we do not need more studies but rather we need more studies that are reproducible. To achieve reproducibility, it is key to focus on both data collection and data analysis. With the Beiwe platform, we attempt to address both. We started by building a platform that collects research-grade data. The old adage about data analysis captures the sentiment perfectly: garbage in, garbage out. Therefore, our first step was to improve the quality of measurements. Many researchers have advocated the role of better measurement in studies that involve any type of quantification of human behavior, a point that has been made repeatedly and vigorously by Andrew Gellman among others. Beiwe captures all study settings in human readable JSON formatted configuration files, and the platform enables an investigator to export and import these files with a single click. Therefore, an investigator wishing to replicate a previous Beiwe study only needs this one file to collect identical data in an identical manner. Data analysis can be replicated by studying the scripts that are used to analyze the output matrices of the Beiwe platform.

Want to find out more about Beiwe or our work in Digital Phenotyping? Detailed information is available on the Onnela Lab Website.

Contact Us for Beiwe as a Service

If you’re interested in using Beiwe as a Service, please complete this form and a member of the Onnela Lab will be in touch with you shortly. If you’re interested in a direct collaboration please contact JP Onnela directly. If you’re interested in using Beiwe open source you can find it on github. Information on Beiwe as a Service pricing is available here.

Digital Phenotyping for All