Fusing Ambient and Mobile Sensor Features Into a Behaviorome for Predicting Clinical Health Scores

IEEE Access. 2021:9:65033-65043. doi: 10.1109/access.2021.3076362. Epub 2021 Apr 28.

Abstract

Advances in machine learning and low-cost, ubiquitous sensors offer a practical method for understanding the predictive relationship between behavior and health. In this study, we analyze this relationship by building a behaviorome, or set of digital behavior markers, from a fusion of data collected from ambient and wearable sensors. We then use the behaviorome to predict clinical scores for a sample of n = 21 participants based on continuous data collected from smart homes and smartwatches and automatically labeled with corresponding activity and location types. To further investigate the relationship between domains, including participant demographics, self-report and external observation-based health scores, and behavior markers, we propose a joint inference technique that improves predictive performance for these types of high-dimensional spaces. For our participant sample, we observe correlations ranging from small to large for the clinical scores. We also observe an improvement in predictive performance when multiple sensor modalities are used and when joint inference is employed.

Keywords: Activity recognition; behavior markers; joint inference; smart homes; smartwatches.