Do you want to get involved?
We need people who are over 18, based in the UK and who have a phone and wear fitness devices such as Fitbit and Garmin or who use Google Fit/Health Connect or Apple Healthkit to join our study to help us develop these models. The more people involved, the better the models get!
Very little input is required from you beyond downloading the BreathBot app, consenting to the study and answering some questions about your health. As the app develops, we hope to be able to useful share insights with you.
More detailed information can be found in the AI-Respire Participant Information Sheet here and there are some Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) below which summarise the key information about participating in this study in simple terms.
If you have any further questions, please contact us: BreathBot@imperial.ac.uk
AI-respire FAQs
- What is the study about?
- Where can I find more information?
- Who can take part?
- How long will it take?
- How do I get involved?
- What data do you need to access?
- How will you use and protect my data? Can I delete it?
- How can I withdraw from the study?
- Who is running the study?
- Who is funding the study?
We are developing the foundations for an AI-based app exploring the impacts of air pollution on our respiratory health. Anyone with compatible fitness devices will eventually be able to learn about the interactions between their exposure to pollutants and their personal physical response, empowering them to make positive decisions to protect their health. Read more about the AI-Respire project here.
See the project page or contact us on BreathBot@imperial.ac.uk for more information.
People who are over 18, currently residing in the UK who have a phone and wear fitness Fitbit and/or Garmin devices or who use Google Fit/Health Connect or Apple Healthkit.
It should take less than 10 minutes to download the BreathBot app and go through the on-boarding process. After that, you will be required to do very little. Some operating systems deactivate apps if you do not use them for a certain time period and so you may receive an occasional notification from the BreathBot app asking you to open the app to re-activate it.
This first phase of the project will run until the end of 2024. We hope to be able to run the app and study for longer and will be in touch to let you know about future plans at that time if you consent for us to do so.
Go to the Apple Store for iPhones or Google Play for Android and download the app on your phone. You will be asked to consent to the study, grant us permissions to your location, health devices and apps and answer some set-up questions. We are currently able to link with Fitbit and Garmin devices as well as Google Fit/Health Connect and the Apple Healthkit. You are welcome to link as many of these devices and apps as you wish.
- Data from Fitbit and/or Garmin devices or Google Fit/Health Connect or Apple Healthkit. This could be breathing rate, heart rate, oxygen levels, quality of sleep etc. and depends on your fitness device. It also includes any additional information you input manually to your fitness apps such as your weight, blood pressure and symptoms such as headaches.
- Your location via your phone’s GPS tracker. This is recorded each time you move more than 200m and is accurate to 200m. This will enable us to check the air quality and weather information for your location and make the links between your environment and health response.
- We will also ask you a few basic questions about your sex, year of birth, height and weight when you sign up. This will enable us to ensure we can profile your health type and link your data to the kinds of health responses we would expect to see for your group.
- Finally, we ask you to fill out a brief health questionnaire when you sign up so that you can let us know if you have any relevant health conditions.
Your data is protected under General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and can only be used for the purpose to which you consent. See the Transparency Notice on page 5 of the Participant Information Sheet for further information.
We only collect personal data which is necessary for the research and, eventually hope to report back to you via the app or email on your personal circumstances. To date, we have contracted CoreBlue Ltd. as a third party to develop and maintain the BreathBot app, as such they will have access to the back end of the BreathBot app and the data base which will store your data. This access is governed by a contract with provisions for confidentiality and data protection as well as a Data Sharing Agreement (whereby Imperial College London is the Data Controller and CoreBlue is a Data Processor).
We are committed to advancing knowledge for the benefit to society and as such will make the results of our research widely available to the public, policy makers and academia to maximise it’s potential for positive impact. It will not be possible to identify you and your information through these communications.
If at any point you’d like to withdraw from the study, please email us at BreathBot@imperial.ac.uk from the account you registered with using the subject heading ‘Withdraw’, we will note your withdrawal and you are free to delete the app.
Imperial College London are running the study, see a full list of project team members in the Team page.
The United Kingdom Research and Innovation are funding this work through the grant ‘AI for Personalised respiratory health and pollution (AI-Respire)’, reference number EP/Y018680/1.
