About Us
IFH aims to integrate lifestyle, community, environment, and social factors in conjunction with clinical knowledge to radically transform health systems away from hospitals and into the hands of each individual. Use power of data created by the nexus of knowledge of genetics and biology, sensors, mobile technology, knowledge-based AI systems, data management, and medical technology to empower people to be healthy. Use power of mobile phones to create personal health navigators that will power healthcare for everybody — the poorest people living in the remotest areas in the world. We convert Healthcare to become a popular Personal Health Navigation approach.
Approches
Living Lab
Our emphasis on lifestyle and environment requires understanding individual and population behavior in real life settings rather than controlled laboratories. By collecting large volumes of data and then selecting appropriate sets using right control parameters, one can understand real life behavior of people. Populations can then be appropriately formed by aggregating similar people.
Global Teams
Since Health research and guidance is based on diverse expertise as well as different geo-social-economic-cultural factors, we are forming partnerships with researchers, practitioners, and organizations in different parts of the world.
Simultaneous Translation
Our approach is to understand lifestyle and environmental factors as the affect an individual and use them to steer their health state based on their personal model. This requires collecting real-time lifestyle and enlivenment data in real-life situations. Also, helping people control their health and collect data about the effectiveness of approaches. This approach requires that we build an infrastructure to simultaneously do research and translation rather than first doing research and then translation.
BACKGROUND
IFH is an Organized Research Unit (ORU) in the University of California, Irvine which brings together researchers, community health workers, medical and mental health practitioners, nurses, patients, and patient advocates working on preventive cybernetic health. IFH has been founded on a shared belief that each individual is unique due to his/her/their omics (genomic, transcriptomic, metabolomics, etc.), lifestyle, environment, and socioeconomic factors. Progress in sensors, mobile and ubiquitous computing, medical, pharmaceutical and nursing sciences, informatics, genomics, and Artificial Intelligence allows gathering information about individuals to build their own personal models for predictive and preventive guidance. Cybernetics (i.e., continuous closed-loop feedback control) principles can provide perpetual guidance to individuals toward a healthy life in real time.
Achieving the goal of preventive health systems in the cybernetic model occurs through the flow of several components. From personalized models, we can predict health status using perpetual sensing and data streams. Given these predictions, we give precise recommendations to best suit the prediction for that individual. To enact these recommendations, we use persuasive technology to deliver and execute targeted interventions. IFH aims to integrate lifestyle, community, environment, and socioeconomic factors in conjunction with clinical knowledge to radically transform health systems away from hospitals and clinics, and into the hands of each individual. IFH’s mission is to help people better manage their health and quality of life with personalized just-in-time advice. This main goal will be achieved by personal reminders, community resources, healthcare services, and a cybernetic approach.
A unique aspect of this ORU is to build “Living Laboratories” for simultaneous research and translation. Two major foci of our research will be the use of both health data as well as lifestyle data. Unfortunately, lifestyle information cannot be collected in artificial labs. IFH builds laboratories that collect data from people in their normal life in everyday settings (i.e., Living Labs), and then use the context of this data to consider appropriate populations for understanding and building models of health in diverse situations. Unlike regular labs where the environment is controlled to collect data, Living Labs enable collecting data from people in their normal, everyday settings and then divide this data into appropriate sets relevant to the desired research tasks. Similarly, unlike traditional models where translation into practice and/or commercialization follows research, Living Labs allow research and translation to work together. Living labs-based solutions will be real-world for real people and will expedite the translation of solutions based on the science into practice.
Privacy Policy
Effective Date: 1/1/2021
Thank you for visiting the Institute for Future Health (IFH). IFH, an Organized Research Unit (ORU) within the University of California, Irvine, is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how IFH collects, uses, and safeguards your information when you visit our website or participate in our research activities.
- Information We Collect
IFH may collect the following types of information:
Personal Information: At IFH, we prioritize your privacy and do not collect personal data when you participate in research studies using our platforms, including ZotCare. All data stored on our platforms is deidentified. We only retain randomly assigned participant ID numbers to ensure your information remains anonymous.
Automatically Collected Information: We may collect certain information automatically when you visit our website, such as referring URLs and interactions with our website.
- Use of Information
We use the information we collect for the following purposes:
To provide you with information and services related to IFH, including research studies, events, and updates.
To improve our website and services by analyzing how users interact with our content.
To conduct research and develop insights in the field of cybernetic health and personalized preventive guidance.
To comply with legal obligations and enforce our policies.
- Sharing of Information
IFH does not sell or share any personal information because such data is not stored on our platforms.
- Data Security
IFH employs industry-standard security measures to protect information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. However, no method of transmission over the Internet or electronic storage is completely secure.
- Your Choices
You have choices regarding the collection and use of your information:
You can opt-out of receiving communications from us by following the unsubscribe instructions included in our emails.
You can choose not to provide certain information, although this may limit your ability to participate in certain activities or services offered by IFH.
- Children’s Privacy
IFH does not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13. If we learn that we have inadvertently collected personal information from a child under 13, we will take steps to delete it as soon as possible.
- Changes to this Privacy Policy
IFH may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the updated policy on our website with the effective date.
- Contact Us
If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy or IFH’s privacy practices, please contact us at futurehealth [at] uci [dot] edu.