North Carolina clinical research company VeraSci is working with ActiGraph, a Florida-based provider of medical-grade wearable activity and sleep monitoring devices, to expand the use of wearables in clinical trials.

VeraSci’s Innovation Lab will be incorporating ActiGraph’s CentrePoint Insight watch into an NIH-funded study examining the relationship between real-time measurements of gait and actigraphy collected by industry-grade wearables and established cognitive and functional endpoints that are sensitive to decline early in the Alzheimer’s disease continuum.

Preliminary data have indicated a correlation between remotely captured gait and actigraphy measures and established cognition and function measures. These data suggest that wearables can provide meaningful information regarding cognitive health and may ultimately contribute to continuous assessment of cognition and function in clinical trials.

“Wearables present an incredible opportunity to gather data in ways that haven’t been feasible before,” said VeraSci CEO Rich Keefe. “We can gather information directly while patients are engaged in their daily lives. Our partnership with ActiGraph advances our commitment to pairing scientific knowledge with cutting-edge technology to improve the tools and measurements available in clinical trials.”

Matt Biggs, ActiGraph’s head of business operations, added: “This partnership between ActiGraph and VeraSci provides an exciting opportunity to better understand the relationship between real-world physical behaviour, function and cognition. We believe that these types of collaborations will help to jumpstart the creation of novel digital endpoints for global health communities.”

The research was supported by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health Small Business Innovation Research programme.

VeraSci is a clinical research company offering e-clinical software, translation services and expertise in endpoints and assessments.

ActiGraph provides medical-grade physical activity and sleep monitoring for the global scientific community. Its FDA-cleared wearable actigraphy monitors and analytics platform have been widely used to quantify human movement in academic and population health research for nearly two decades. In recent years, the company’s monitoring products have been steadily adopted by pharmaceutical and life sciences organisations seeking to capture real-world objective outcomes related to physical activity, mobility and sleep behaviour for patients enrolled in clinical trials.