Ernesto Ramirez

January 27, 2015

New sensors are peeking into previously invisible or hard to understand human behaviors and information. This has led to many researchers and organizations developing an interest in exploring and learning from the increasing amount of personal self-tracking data being produced by self-trackers. Even though individuals are producing more and more personal data that could possibly provide insights into health and wellness, access to that data remains a hurdle. Over the last few years a few different projects, companies, and research studies have launched to tackle this data access issue. As an introduction to this area, we’ve put together a short list of three interesting projects that involve donating personal data for broader use.

DataDonors.org
Developed and administed by the WikiLife foundation, the DataDonors platform allows individuals to upload and donate various forms of self-report and Quantified Self data. Data is currently available to the public at no cost in an aggregated format (JSON/CSV). Data types includes physical activity, diet, sleep, mood, and many others.

OpenSNP.org
OpenSNP is an online community of over 1600 individuals who’ve chosen to upload and publicly share their direct-to-consumer genetic testing results ( 23andMe, deCODEme or FamilyTreeDNA) . Genotype and phenotype data is freely available to the public.

Open Paths
Open Paths is an Android and iOS geolocation data collection tool developed by the New York Times R&D Lab. It periodically collects, transmits, and stores your geolocation in a secure database. The data is available to users via an API and data export functions. Additionally, users can grant access to their data to researchers who have submitted projects.

We’ll be expanding this list in the coming weeks with additional companies, projects, and research studies that involve personal self-tracking data donation. If you have one to share comment here or get in touch.