TERRA (Tracking and Evaluating Real-world Rhythms and Analytics) is an innovative, exploratory, and investigator-led project aimed at addressing the urgent societal need posed by Ireland’s expanding and ageing population. As the fastest ageing country in Europe, the “silver tsunami” threatens to overwhelm our health and social care systems. This challenge is further amplified by the demand-supply gap in the healthcare workforce, escalating health expenditure, and persistent healthcare delivery bottlenecks.
TERRA will leverage the power of wearable technologies and the unprecedented ‘real-world’ health insights they offer to mitigate these issues. We will combine health biodata captured from commercial wearable devices to create a unique biometric ‘fingerprint’ for individuals. We will then monitor the short- and medium-term temporal characteristics of these biosignatures to explore their potential as unique health status indicators and predictors of health deterioration.
The project will execute a multi-stage methodology. The initial phase will focus on recruiting and profiling a diverse sample of adults who already own wearable devices using biometric data such as resting heart rate, heart rate variability, respiratory rate, body temperature, physical activity and sleep. Subsequent phases will involve longitudinal monitoring and data collation, whereby sophisticated data analysis will be used to develop biosignature ‘classifiers’ for each individual. We will then develop a feedback system so that users can learn about their health and how to improve it; we will also develop a curriculum around wearable devices and biometric for university education.
The study’s broader goals are twofold. Firstly, TERRA aims to develop a framework detailing how wearable derived biometric data can be used to help shift the healthcare paradigm from reactive to proactive, transitioning from a model of illness treatment to one of health preservation. Secondly, it seeks to contribute to the democratisation and personalisation of healthcare, empowering individuals with real-time, personalised health insights.