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CARWatch App

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Get CARWatch in the Play Store:
Google Play

CARWatch is an Android application for objectively saliva sampling times during cortisol awakening response (CAR) studies.

Objective

The CAR is the natural increase in cortisol levels that occurs within 30-45 minutes after waking up and can be an important indicator for overall health and well-being.

However, many CAR studies suffer from low adherence to the study protocol as well as from the lack of precise and objective methods for assessing the awakening and saliva sampling times which leads to measurement bias on CAR quantification. This issue can be solved by CARWatch, an Android application that allows for objective saliva sampling times during CAR studies.

Features

The main purpose of the application is to reduce saliva sampling inaccuracies by objectively assessing saliva sampling times during CAR assessment.

CARWatch includes the following features:

  • Awakening time assessment: Awakening can be assessed either by setting an alarm by the user or by pressing a button in the application in the case of spontaneous awakening.
  • Saliva sampling time assessment: Saliva sampling times are recorded by setting alarms for each saliva sample which can only be turned off by scanning a barcode on the saliva sampling tube.
  • Data export: All data collected by CARWatch can be exported which can be used for further analysis.

Getting Started

To use CARWatch, simply download the app from the Google Play Store. Alternatively, clone this repository, open the project in Android Studio, build the project and install the app on your Android device.

Usage

CARWatch is designed to be used in CAR studies. The following steps describe how to use CARWatch in a CAR study:
to be added

How to cite

If you use CARWatch in your research, please cite our Psychoneuroendocrinology article:

Richer, R., Abel, L., Küderle, A., Eskofier, B. M., & Rohleder, N. (2023). 
CARWatch – A smartphone application for improving the accuracy of cortisol awakening response 
sampling. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 151, 106073. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2023.106073

Studies using CARWatch

The following papers used CARWatch in their research:

  • Richer, R., Abel, L., Küderle, A., Eskofier, B. M., & Rohleder, N. (2023). CARWatch – A smartphone application for improving the accuracy of cortisol awakening response sampling. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 151, 106073. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2023.106073
  • Richer, R., Küderle, A., Dörr, J., Rohleder, N., & Eskofier, B. M. (2021). Assessing the Influence of the Inner Clock on the Cortisol Awakening Response and Pre-Awakening Movement. 2021 IEEE EMBS International Conference on Biomedical and Health Informatics (BHI), 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1109/BHI50953.2021.9508529
  • further papers to be added - let us know if you used CARWatch in your research!

Compatibility

CARWatch requires an Android device running Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) or higher.

Contributing

We welcome contributions to CARWatch! To contribute, please fork this repository and submit a pull request with your changes.

License

CARWatch is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for more information.

Contact

If you have any questions or feedback about CARWatch, please contact Robert Richer.