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How to use Welltory for research
How to use Welltory for research
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Written by Mark
Updated over 6 months ago

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Welltory provides plenty of opportunities for researchers who study both short- and long-term physiological effects of just about anything on the body: meditation, various diets, smoking, and much more.

Welltory assesses the state of a person’s nervous system by measuring their heart rate variability and analyzing it with the help of self-learning algorithms. Researchers can use such measurement results to track changes in a participant’s nervous system in response to specific stimuli.

For example, say you want to find out how meditation affects people’s stress levels. One way to do this is to have research participants take measurements before and after a meditation session, then compare the results. You could also analyze the effects of meditation over the long-term by looking at how meditating every day for a month affects people’s morning measurement results.

I want to use Welltory in my research, what should I do?

If your research involves up to 50 participants — fill in the application form for free Welltory academic licenses.

If your research involves 50+ participants — fill in the application form for paid Welltory academic licenses.

After you’ve filled in the form, we’ll contact you to discuss the details. If you have any questions, you can also ask them within the form.

How much will it cost to use Welltory in my research?

If your research involves up to 50 participants, and if you’re going to publish its results — you can get Welltory academic licenses and up to three standard data exports for free. Fill in the application form for free Welltory academic licenses here.

To discuss specific terms and conditions for studies involving 50+ participants or requiring more than three standard data exports — fill in the application form for paid Welltory academic licenses here.

What kind of data can I get from Welltory HRV measurements?

If your research participants are using the free version of Welltory, you can track the following basic metrics:

  • Stress (%)

  • Energy (%)

  • Focus (%)

  • Coefficient of Variation

  • Heart Rate (bpm)

  • SDNN (ms)

If your research participants are using Welltory Premium, you can monitor all calculated data, i.e. the following metrics in addition to the basic ones:

  • ANS Balance

  • Coherence (%)

  • HRV Score (%)

  • Mean RR (ms)

  • rMSSD (ms)

  • MxDMn (s)

  • pNN50 (%)

  • AMo50 (%/50ms)

  • Moda (ms)

  • Total Power (ms²)

  • HF (ms²)

  • LF (ms²)

  • VLF (ms²)

What kind of data can I get by syncing other apps and gadgets with Welltory?

Welltory users can connect 100+ apps and gadgets to keep all of their health and fitness data on Welltory dashboard. You can sync data sources like Fitbit, Garmin, Withings, RescueTime, etc.

Connect your apps and gadgets via aggregators (Apple Health, Google Fit, Samsung Health) for free or go Premium to sync some of the data directly.

With free integrations, you can track basic metrics supported by aggregators, such as steps, heart rate, blood pressure, weight, etc. A direct integration gives additional charts to track your activity breaks, cardio volume, strength intensity, heart rate zones, blood pressure indexes, and more.

Here are just a few types of data users can sync with Welltory through various apps and gadgets (depending on what data they can collect and share and on whether they are connected via aggregator or directly):

  • Activity: steps, calories burned, walking speed, walking and running distance

  • Health: blood pressure, weight, body fat percent, menstrual cycles, oxygen saturation, body temperature

  • Sleep: time asleep, sleep heart rate, wake-ups per night

  • Productivity: screen time, productive time, time in social media, procrastination

  • Meditation: meditation time, meditation heart rate

  • Nutrition: calories and water consumed

  • Weather and environment: outdoor air temperature, atmospheric pressure, outdoor humidity, cloudiness, precipitation; indoor air temperature, indoor humidity, carbon dioxide level, noise level

How do I collect data from research participants?

There are several ways:

  1. Ask each participant to export their data and send it to you.

  2. Ask each participant to provide you with the link to their dashboard, so that you can export the data you need yourself.

  3. Contact us to set up data exports for all participants. This approach is preferable when there are many people participating in your research, and you don’t want to waste time exporting data for each of them.

How can research participants export their HRV data?

Ask them to do the following:

  • Set the period for which you want to export the data. Use the Latest, Days, Weeks, or Months tab and the date interval in the upper right corner of the chart.

  • Click Export in the lower right corner to export measurement results.

  • Click RR intervals in the lower right corner to export measurement RR data.

Files will be downloaded in the CSV format.

How can I export a research participant’s HRV data?

  • Ask a participant to go to the Welltory web app, click Dashboard, and click Share in the upper right corner. Then, the option to share the link by copying it to the clipboard or sending it through an app of choice will become available.

  • Ask them to send this link to you — it will give you access to the participant’s dashboard with all their measurement data and any other data they collect through apps and gadgets synced with Welltory.

  • To export their measurement data, click on any chart in the HRV section.

  • Set the period for which you want to export the data. Use the Latest, Days, Weeks, or Months tab and the date interval in the upper right corner of the chart.

  • Click Export in the lower right corner to export measurement results.

  • Click RR intervals in the lower right corner to export measurement RR data.

Files will be downloaded in the CSV format.

How can I set up data exports for all participants?

For bigger studies, it can be difficult to process large volumes of data manually. If this is the case, you can contact us to set up one-time or regular data exports for your research.

To discuss specific terms and conditions:

You can find the example of such data export in our study here.

Happy researching!

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