LOTUS Software to Process Wearable EmbracePlus Data.

The Empatica EmbracePlus is a recent innovation in medical-grade wristband wearable sensors that enable unobtrusive continuous measurement of pulse rate, electrodermal activity, skin temperature, and various accelerometry-based actigraphy measures using a minimalistic smartwatch design. The advantage of this lightweight wearable is the potential for holistic longitudinal recording and monitoring of physiological processes that index a suite of autonomic functions, as well as to provide ecologically valid insights into human behaviour, health, physical activity, and psychophysiological processes. Given the longitudinal nature of wearable recordings, EmbracePlus data collection is managed by storing raw timeseries in short 'chunks' in avro file format organised by universal standard time.

Impact of a national dementia research consortium: The Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA).

The Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA) was created by the Canadian federal government through its health research funding agency, the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR), in 2014, as a response to the G7 initiative to fight dementia. Two five-year funding cycles (2014-2019; 2019-2024) have occurred following peer review, and a third cycle (Phase 3) has just begun. A unique construct was mandated, consisting of 20 national teams in Phase I and 19 teams in Phase II (with research topics spanning from basic to clinical science to health resource systems) along with cross-cutting programs to support them.

Identifying the ways in which tobacco cessation interventions have been tailored for sexual and gender minority individuals: A systematic review.

Sexual and gender minority (SGM) individuals smoke at higher rates than their heterosexual and cisgender peers. SGM persons, especially transgender and gender diverse (TGD) individuals, face unique, adverse health effects associated with smoking. As such, SGM individuals may benefit from smoking cessation interventions that are tailored to meet their needs.

Cognitive Speed in Neurodegenerative Disease: Comparing Mean Rate and Inconsistency Within and Across the Alzheimer's and Lewy Body Spectra in the COMPASS-ND Study.

Background: Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Lewy body disease (LBD) are characterized by early and gradual worsening perturbations in speeded cognitive responses.

Objective: Using simple and choice reaction time tasks, we compared two indicators of cognitive speed within and across the AD and LBD spectra: mean rate (average reaction time across trials) and inconsistency (within person variability).

Methods: The AD spectrum cohorts included subjective cognitive impairment (SCI, n = 28), mild cognitive impairment (MCI, n = 121), and AD (n = 45) participants.

MigraineTracker: Examining Patient Experiences with Goal-Directed Self-Tracking for a Chronic Health Condition.

Self-tracking and personal informatics offer important potential in chronic condition management, but such potential is often undermined by difficulty in aligning self-tracking tools to an individual's goals. Informed by prior proposals of goal-directed tracking, we designed and developed MigraineTracker, a prototype app that emphasizes explicit expression of goals for migraine-related self-tracking. We then examined migraine patient experiences in a deployment study for an average of 12+ months, including a total of 50 interview sessions with 10 patients working with 3 different clinicians.