Technology has made it possible to study people’s behavior at an unprecedented level of detail. The advent of mobile devices and sensors allows both passive and active individual-level data collection. This opens opportunities for research, particularly in the fields of health and human behavior. High-resolution data can be collected from devices as diverse as mobile phones, wearables, social media platforms, and online surveys.

Data can be collected both purposefully (controlled studies) and as a side-effect of other processes (secondary use). It can then be processed and analyzed for various purposes from “quantified self” feedback to digital phenotyping and personalized medicine. These topics have a high impact on modern research, business, and society.

This symposium will gather the data collection community both in the Helsinki region, Finland, and internationally to discuss and network. The symposium will provide an opportunity to see the state of the art of data collection from humans, both on the tools needed to collect data and applications and analysis of that data. Topics will include design and technology, research questions, analysis and computation, ethics of human data collection, and the current ecosystem at Aalto, in Finland, and beyond.

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