Human Health proudly partners with research organizations who share our goal of improving the standard of care for chronic illness. These partnerships provide users of the Human Health app the opportunity to contribute to research that could improve treatment for you and for others living with similar conditions.
Participation is always your choice. We've built the consent process in two layers so you stay in control at every point, and this article walks through how it works.
Why we're doing this
Chronic illness gets less research attention than its prevalence warrants. The people best positioned to help change that are the people living with these conditions day to day, who already understand their experience in detail and (if they're using Human Health) are already tracking it. Research organizations often struggle to reach this population through traditional channels.
A core part of Human Health’s mission is to bridge that gap, and enable you to contribute to research that's been missing your voice.
There are two separate decisions you control:
1. Whether we can match you to research opportunities at all.
If you opt in, we use your tracked health data to identify opportunities that might be relevant to you, and we let you know about them. No data is shared outside of our secure systems to do this, and we’ll contact you through the app or email. If you don't opt in, your health data is never used for matching, and you simply won't hear about opportunities. That's a valid choice, and it doesn't change anything else about your experience using the app.
You can change this decision at any time in your settings.
2. Whether you participate in any specific research opportunity.
Even if you've opted in to matching, every individual opportunity is its own decision. Each will be described upfront, including what's involved, how long it takes, what data will be shared, and who you'll be sharing it with. You can say yes to some and no to others. Declining an opportunity doesn't affect future invitations.
What participation might look like
Each research opportunity is different. Some are short surveys you can complete in a few minutes. Others involve answering questions over time. The specifics vary and are described upfront so you know exactly what you're agreeing to before you opt in.
How we choose research partners
We work with research organizations that:
- Have appropriate ethics oversight in place (such as an institutional review board or human research ethics committee)
- Are focused on improving care for people with chronic illness
Where research is published, we'll link to it so you can see the outcomes of work you may have contributed to.
Your data, your choice
The two step consent process means that you’re always in control of how your data is used. The full picture of how we handle your data more generally, including the relevant details of our privacy and security practices, lives in our Privacy Policy.
Questions
If you have questions about any of this, or about a specific opportunity you've been invited to, email us at support@human.health.
Happy tracking,
The Human Health Team