The mHealth Training Institute (mHTI), which seeks to train the next generation of experts in mobile health (mHealth), was held July 29-August 3 at the University of California at Los Angeles. mHTI is funded by the National Institutes of Health and co-sponsored by the Center of Excellence for Mobile Sensor Data-to-Knowledge (MD2K).
The mHealth field crosses many disciplines – medicine, computer science, engineering, behavioral science, statistics, to name a few. To take advantage of the opportunities that are available due to the increased use of mobile sensors in devices like smartphones and activity trackers, scientists from these disparate disciplines need to work together and eliminate the gap between technology development and their adoption for health research and health care.
Thirty mHealth scholars, selected from more than 200 applicants, spent a week learning from thought leaders in medicine, computer science, engineering and behavioral science. The 2018 mHTI group included 11 scientists from behavioral science, 6 from computer science and engineering, 10 from medicine, and 3 from public health. These 30 scholars work at 24 institutions from all over the country.
The scholars were immersed in mHealth perspectives and methods, with the group divided into multidisciplinary teams that each worked on a problem-based team science project, which allowed individual members to apply their particular expertise jointly. Each team was mentored by two mHealth experts. Project proposals were presented on the last day of the institute.
Conducted each year since the founding of MD2K Center in 2014, this was the fourth annual offering of mHTI. Since 2014, 135 scientists from 73 institutions have been collectively trained in mHTI. Several of the mHTI scholars have gone on to become leading scientists in mHealth.
Given widespread interest from the scientific community and industry, videos of all lectures held at mHTI are posted on mHealthHUB (https://mhealth.md2k.org/vault). These lectures have been viewed in 142 countries.
The institute was organized by Dr. Vivek Shetty, who is director of the Training Core for MD2K. Shetty is a professor of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery as well as Assistant Vice-Chancellor for Research at UCLA. mHTI sponsors included the NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research, MD2K, UCLA Engineering, the Science of Behavior Change, Procter & Gamble, and the UCLA Clinical and Translational Science Institute.
Plans are already underway for next year's institute, which will be held July 26- August 3, 2019 at UCLA.
To find out more about mHTI visit mhealth.md2k.org/mhealth-training-institute and to find out more about MD2K, visit md2k.org.