Labfront x Garmin: Accelerating Adoption of Wearable Technologies in Academic Research

Today we announced something big: Labfront has entered into an official collaboration with Garmin®,  a leading global provider of smartwatches, fitness trackers, and digital health solutions.

We’re excited about what this collaboration means for researchers. Garmin has an established reputation in the scientific community and broad acceptance of its devices as reliable physiological data collection tools. Together, we aim to expand the benefits of collecting and analyzing data from wearables more efficiently to a wider spectrum of researchers.

Here’s what you can look forward to with this collaboration:

A powerful complementary research platform

With this agreement, Labfront will work directly with researchers to create a complementary research platform that captures objective, physiological sensor data¹ from Garmin wearables and smartwatches while managing participant adherence in real-time. 

“Garmin is excited to work with a company like Labfront that’s focused on elevating health research,” said Jörn Watzke, senior director of Garmin Health global business development. “With this collaboration, we’re bringing together some of the industry’s best wearable devices with Labfront’s platform designed specifically for the unique needs of researchers.”

With this collaboration, we’re bringing together some of the industry’s best wearable devices with Labfront’s platform designed specifically for the unique needs of researchers.

More granular sensor data

Under the collaboration, Labfront gains the ability to configure Garmin devices using the Garmin Health SDKs to increase the sensor resolution, allowing researchers to capture higher-resolution data than normally collected by Garmin. This means using Labfront can turn a standard Garmin device into an even more powerful data collection tool, capturing measurements like the time between individual heartbeats, known as beat-to-beat or interbeat interval. The granularity of this data allows for researchers to effectively derive valuable metrics like heart rate variability from PPG  sensors.

Garmin devices along with the Labfront platform are already utilized for this purpose by the Stanford WELL for Life Study, a longitudinal international cohort study aiming to enhance health and well-being on a global scale. Principal Investigator Dr. Ann Hsing is using heart rate variability to estimate stress levels, sleep quality, and other biometric data. 

Together, Labfront and Garmin are able to provide the real granular data so we can actually customize it to fit our needs.

Combining the strengths of Garmin and Labfront will enhance the experience for researchers and make it easier than ever to collect and analyze physiological data.  Researchers from top institutions are already using Garmin devices with the Labfront platform and we can’t wait to see what more researchers can accomplish with these devices. 

If you’re looking to incorporate Garmin devices  into your upcoming studies, please get in touch via hello@labfront.com to find out how we can help.

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^{¹Garmin smartwatches are not designed or intended to monitor or diagnose diseases or any medical conditions. Find information on metric accuracy here.}

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