Dr. Eric Hurwitz, postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Melissa Haendel (Distinguished Professor, Genetics), is the first author on a titled 鈥淯nlocking the potential of wear time of a wearable device to enhance postpartum depression screening and detection: cross-sectional study鈥�, published in the journal JMIR Formative Research.
Using the All of Us Research Program dataset, the study demonstrated a strong trend that females with postpartum depression (PPD) wore their Fitbits more than those without PPD, leading the team to hypothesize that increased Fitbit wear time among females with PPD may be attributed to hypervigilance.聽 Future studies will focus on combining wear time patterns with digital biomarkers such as sleep and physical activity to enhance early PPD detection using machine learning.