Domestic Health Index - Incite at Columbia University

The proliferation of wearable technology presents an unprecedented opportunity both to measure population health in new ways and to make it more culturally salient.

We envisioned a “domestic health index,” or DHI, as both a promotional tool and as a valuable dataset in its own right. Between 2017 and 2019, we consulted experts and learned more about the rapidly evolving digital health space.

As part of this exploration, we conducted a scan of the use of wearable devices and mHealth (mobile health) apps in research, with a focus on work that would inform our planning for a DHI. Next, we engaged a series of issues that bear more specifically on the design of a DHI, including what health indicators to include, how participants might be recruited and retained, and—ultimately—how this initiative might be sustained.

In January 2019, we published a draft of the Domestic Health Index.