Phonotype: a New Taxonomy for mHealth Research
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and David A. Brent, MD3
1
Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA, USA; 2Center for Behavioral Health and Smart Technology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA, USA; 3Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
J Gen Intern Med DOI: 10.1007/s11606-019-05407-7 © Society of General Internal Medicine 2019
Our phones and computers have become reflections of our personalities, our interests, and our identities. They hold much that is important to us.1 James B. Comey, Former FBI Director Genotype and phenotype are established terms used to describe the set of genes that are unique to a person’s genetic makeup, and the observable characteristics resulting from the interaction of that genotype with the environment, respectively. Adding to this taxonomy, we propose a new term, Bphonotype,^ to describe how information collected by an individual’s smartphone can be utilized to understand their behavior and promote health. While similar phrases including reality mining, digital phenotyping, and personal informatics have also been used to describe research involving smartphone-collected data,2 we advocate for the term Bphonotype^ instead given its (1) clear connotation to smartphones; (2) B-type^ suffix consistency with genotype and phenotype; and (3) single-word simplicity. Moreover, the term captures the potential use of data obtained from smartphones to characterize human activity and behavior in ways that can be mapped onto one’s genotype and phenotype.
A NEW ERA IN PERSONALIZED MEDICINE
Internet-connected smartphones began to appear on the consumer market in the early 2000s, and have become nearly ubiquitous in the decade following the launch of the first-generation Apple iPhone in 2007 and release of Google’s Android operating system approximately 1 year later. It is now estimated there are over 2.5 billion smartphones in use worldwide with high rates of Twitter handle @HealthTechPitt to Center for Behavioral Health and Smart Technology Received August 15, 2019 Revised August 15, 2019 Accepted September 20, 2019
ownership in both advanced and emerging economies.3 Furthermore, they have become an essential component in the lives of most Americans with over 80% of US adults owning a device and ownership rates that are similar by race and high even among the less affluent (71% of individuals with annual incomes ≤ $30,000 own a smartphone).4
PHONOTYPE DATA LEVELS
Unlike earlier generations of mobile phones, modern smartphones contain accelerometers, gyroscopes, light sensors, microphones, cameras, and GPS. These sensors passively collect Bdigital exhaust^2 that can be analyzed to establish normal baseline and diurnal patterns in how an individual smartphone user types, taps, speaks, moves, sleeps, and uses their apps (phonotype level 1). Moreover, this information can be augmented with passively collected smartphone data o
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