Centralive is proud to jointly host a pre-course workshop with the UCI Institute for Future Health at the Society of Behavioral Medicine Annual Meeting 2026. This pre-course is designed for researchers, clinicians, and innovators interested in advancing behavioral health research through real-world digital data.
As wearable devices and smartphones become increasingly embedded in daily life, behavioral medicine faces both an opportunity and a challenge. While passive sensing can capture rich information about sleep, activity, physiology, and behavior, translating these signals into clinically meaningful insights requires thoughtful study design, integration with self-report, and appropriate analytic methods. This pre-course addresses that gap.
What the pre-course will focus on
The session will provide a practical introduction to designing and running digital behavioral health studies that move beyond prediction toward understanding mechanisms and causality. Topics will include:
- Combining wearable, smartphone, and ecological momentary assessment data in real-world settings
- Designing longitudinal studies that capture within-person change rather than static snapshots
- Using platforms like Centralive to support scalable, privacy-aware data collection
- Understanding common pitfalls in passive sensing studies, including missing data, context loss, and overinterpretation of single metrics
- Translating complex multimodal data into outcomes that matter for behavioral medicine and clinical decision-making
The course is grounded in real research use cases, including recent work on loneliness, stress, sleep, and autonomic regulation, and emphasizes lessons learned from deploying digital tools outside the lab.
Why this matters for behavioral medicine
Behavioral medicine increasingly relies on digital measures, yet many studies still struggle with fragmented data, limited temporal resolution, or unclear causal interpretation. This pre-course is designed to help attendees bridge the gap between data collection and actionable insight.
By bringing together Centralive’s experience building real-world digital health infrastructure and the UCI Institute for Future Health’s expertise in behavioral and preventive health research, the course offers a rare opportunity to learn how technology, methodology, and theory can align.
Who should attend
This pre-course is particularly relevant for:
- Behavioral medicine researchers planning or running digital health studies
- Clinicians interested in integrating wearable or remote monitoring data into research or care
- Data scientists working with longitudinal health data
- Early-career investigators seeking practical guidance on study design and implementation
No advanced technical background is required. The emphasis is on conceptual clarity, study design decisions, and real-world applicability.
Learn more and register
Details about the pre-course, including scheduling and registration, are available through the official SBM Annual Meeting program at this link.
We look forward to connecting with the behavioral medicine community at SBM 2026 and contributing to the next generation of digital, data-informed behavioral health research.
