Geisinger Commonwealth medical students present at 2019 Technology Education Research Symposium

Speakers’ presentations are published in Volume 3 Issue 1 of the Pennsylvania Association of Educational Communication and Technology’s (PAECT) Technology Education Research Journal.

Matt Hope of Wyomissing and Evan Porter of Jefferson City, Missouri presented on Summa, a new healthcare technology company they founded to create a way for researchers to access “personally generated health data,” or PGHD.

PGHD is the exponentially growing reservoir of consumer-owned data collected by FitBits and apps (applications) that track everything from an individual’s diet, heart rate and sleep to personal stress levels. It even includes genetic data people purchase when they go to companies like 23 and Me to learn more about their heritage. The data generated in this way presents a rich, untapped resource for researchers connected with organizations too small to have the means to purchase “big data” the way, for example, large pharmaceutical companies can. Summa’s idea is to connect these types of researchers directly with individuals generating the data via an app. The app permits researchers to access the data while keeping control in the hands of the consumer.

Matt provides a scenario to explain the concept. "Suppose a university psychology researcher wants to assess something like resilience. Maybe they are interested in how resilience impacts student academic performance or patient health outcomes. To do these research projects today, researchers would use survey instruments to gather subjective data from their study participants. But what's interesting is that new evidence suggests that things like heart rate variability can be used to measure stress resilience in a quantitative, objective fashion. With Summa, the psychologist would not only be able to distribute survey instruments to their student and patient populations, but also collect data from participant devices like Fitbit to assess heart rate, activity levels, sleep and more. With access to all this data, researchers will be able to ask new questions and test them in novel ways. We believe this can make a big difference in academic research and healthcare quality improvement,” he said.

The Technology Education Research Symposium is an annual conference sponsored by the Pennsylvania Association of Educational Communication and Technology (PAECT) and highlights educational technologies related to student success and corporate innovation. PAECT is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, volunteer-led organization supporting and speaking for educational technology in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

About Geisinger
Geisinger is among the nation’s leading providers of value-based care, serving 1.2 million people in urban and rural communities across Pennsylvania. Founded in 1915 by philanthropist Abigail Geisinger, the non-profit system generates $10 billion in annual revenues across 134 care sites - including 10 hospital campuses, and Geisinger Health Plan, with 600,000 members in commercial and government plans. The Geisinger College of Health Sciences educates more than 5,000 medical professionals annually and conducts more than 1,400 clinical research studies. With 26,000 employees, including 1,600 employed physicians, Geisinger is among Pennsylvania’s largest employers with an estimated economic impact of $14 billion to the state’s economy. On March 31, 2024, Geisinger became the first member of Risant Health, a new nonprofit charitable organization created to expand and accelerate value-based care across the country.  Learn more at geisinger.org or connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and X.