The doors have officially opened to a new space in Prince Lab where researchers, innovators and industry partners together can accelerate new digital health technologies and regulatory approaches, while scaling-up proven solutions. The health technology “sandbox” offers a flexible, physical space for experimentation of innovative uses of both data accumulation and its integration into health solutions. The end goal is to bring together stakeholders, including startups, government representatives, experts and end-users, to a common ecosystem for co-creating and refining solutions, while also informing future regulatory policies.
Brown’s Center for Digital Health (CDH) Director and Engineering Professor Kimani Toussaint greeted visitors to the sandbox on Friday. The experimental space is something he has been working on since joining up with the CDH during Covid-19 and was able to put it into motion as he became its director in 2023. “For me as an engineer, I never used the words ‘digital health’,” he said. “We would talk about the development of sensors and technologies to help people in the clinical world. But the more I started to interact with (public health and medical colleagues at Brown) who were trying to move the needle in terms of leveraging health apps, and realized what we’re doing on the engineering side, where we are developing these cutting-edge technologies, it became more clear we needed an ecosystem to be able to nucleate our activities and germinate our ideas to spur innovation.”
Initial researchers joining Toussaint (optical sensors) in the space are Associate Professor Haneesh Kesari (kinematics, inertial and spatial sensing), Professor Ben Kimia (computer vision, wearable computing), Associate Professor of the Practice Louise Manfredi (design engineering) and Assistant Professor Peipei Zhou (AI enabled embedded computing platforms), but others from engineering, public health, and behavioral and social sciences are expected to join and recruit industry associates to participate alongside them in the sandbox.
For now, with an emphasis on its flexibility, the room itself is divided into three areas: a tech space where chips, circuit boards and microscopes are nestled into clean cubbies with bright lighting; a physician office area with an examination chair, scale, and treadmill; and an area currently set up as a living room, simulating an at-home built environment where patients could be observed in day-to-day living. An experimental AI-powered avatar also roams the room.
Funding for the room’s renovation and opening comes from a Hazeltine Faculty Innovation Award, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and the Brown University Center for Digital Health.