Person-generated health and wellness data for health care

People are increasingly capturing health, wellness, and clinical data about themselves using a growing palette of inexpensive and pervasive technologies. These technologies allow people to record, analyze, and curate health data outside of settings where health care is traditionally delivered, and without consistently involving health care professionals. Examples include wrist-worn accelerometers with software that calculates daily footsteps and sleep, global positioning service–enabled devices that track miles run or biked, Web-based health journaling tools, smart online food diaries, and networked weight scales or blood pressure machines. People also use online resources such as social networks to help them use and interpret data obtained by these technologies as well as data originating from more traditional medical testing. In many cases, these technologies can complement, or even replace, interactions with health care professionals. Recognizing that people often use these technologies independent of situations where they are patients per se (eg, when navigating the health care system or as part of a prescribed treatment program) we term them “person-generated health data” (PGHD) technologies. This JAMIA special issue focuses on technologies people use to record, manage, interpret, and display data representing health, wellness, and clinically related activities. Interpreting the importance of data produced by PGHD technologies for individual people can be challenging. The growing availability and widespread adoption of PGHD technologies lead to a number of key informatics issues. Currently, the field lacks a clear theoretical basis, a set of data models, and empirically derived strategies for integrating tools and data into existing clinical applications and workflows. Research focused on evaluating PGHD and its utility in health care decision-making has not kept up with the rapidly growing market for these technologies. This special issue was assembled to provide a forum for investigators conducting research or conceptualizing perspectives on PGHD to present their work. Manuscripts in …