Digitally Driven
Center for Digital Health Connects Faculty with Tech
Launched in 2017, the Stanford Center for Digital Health is enabling collaboration and exploration between Stanford faculty and Silicon Valley technology companies—from startups to large tech players worldwide. By promoting partnerships, performing clinical research, and educating the next generation of physicians and digital health care leaders, we are advancing our mission to improve patient care through precision health.
We established this organization to enable the community, to connect external opportunities, and to lead key initiatives in digital health.
ENABLE
With our biomedical expertise and location in Silicon Valley, Stanford Medicine is uniquely positioned to be a leader and key enabler in this emerging field.
Our goal is to enable the Stanford University community to innovate and improve health care with technology. Through seed research grants and digital health technology, and through comprehensive clinical trials, Stanford project teams are exploring, investigating, and validating disease outcomes, cost-effectiveness, engagement, and the use of digital health solutions. The Stanford Center for Digital Health provides guidance, shares best practices, and develops the tools required.
CONNECT
There are hundreds of startups focused on digital health today, but how do they make connections with Stanford faculty and vice versa? The Center for Digital Health makes this possible. Suppose a researcher is interested in pulmonary digital health research. The Center may know a company exploring the same area, and will connect them. For example, in one initiative we awarded 1,000 Apple Watches and five seed grants to Stanford Medicine investigators. Their projects are exploring creative uses of smartwatches to achieve meaningful health care outcomes in stroke, migraine, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and other conditions. Our aim is to facilitate novel and transformative research with health care technology, leveraging the expertise and academic rigor of Stanford. And it all starts with making the right connections.
LEAD
Through the development of “disruptive” research, the Center leads initiatives in digital health, and also helps develop the next generation of health care leaders through fellowships, internships, conferences, and classroom materials. Going beyond precision health, our research emphasizes “precision engagement”—customizing the message and the motivation to each individual in any study. From technology assessments and implementation studies to multi-center trials, the Center plays a key role in looking at ways to incorporate digital tools into the practice of health care, new advances that improve patient care, costs, and more. As an example, there is a large, 25-site, 400-patient randomized trial using digital interventions combined with health coaches underway. It is looking at ways to improve medication adherence in atrial fibrillation.
DIGITALLY DRIVEN: CONNECTING TECHNOLOGY AND BIG DATA, FROM EDUCATION TO PRACTICE
We're building the infrastructure, the resources, and the right collaborations to make digital health a reality for patients. Why? Because we see data permeating every component of the health care ecosystem—medical research, daily life, the patient experience, ongoing care, prediction, and prevention.