IMMEDIATE Launched a New Garmin Study on Stress and Resilience in Healthcare Workers

The upcoming observational study, developed in agreement with the IMMEDIATE Project Partners, aims to explore the potential of passive data collected through smartwatches to monitor stress and resilience among healthcare professionals. Although not originally planned within the IMMEDIATE Project framework, this study was added to evaluate how wearable technologies can help identify early risk and resilience factors linked to chronic stress and inflammation.

A total of 60 healthcare professionals will take part in the study. All participants are currently employed in high-stress clinical environments such as emergency rooms, intensive care units, or similar departments. They will be divided into two cohorts of 30 people: one based in Italy and the other in Poland.

• The Italian cohort will be coordinated by Zadig srl Benefit Company, WP5 Partner, in collaboration with Professor Mattia Bellan and Professor Claudio Giuseppe Molinari of the University of Eastern Piedmont, Novara.
• The Polish cohort will be coordinated by Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin, WP3 Partner, under the guidance of Professor Karolina Skonieczna-Żydecka.

Over a three-month period, each participant will wear a Garmin smartwatch continuously. The device will passively collect key physiological and behavioural indicators 24/7, focusing on:

1. Heart Rate Variability (HRV): a measure of the autonomic nervous system’s activity, which can indicate stress and resilience.
2. Sleep duration and quality: to assess the impact of sleep on stress and recovery.
3. Physical Activity: tracked to determine activity-related stress or recovery and its role in overall well-being.
4. Body Battery: a composite measure developed by Garmin that integrates HRV, stress, sleep, and activity to provide an overall assessment of energy and recovery levels throughout the day.

In parallel with the passive data collection, participants will complete a series of self-reported questionnaires to validate and contextualise the data collected from the smartwatches. These include:

• Daily Check-ins (2 questions): whether the participant worked that day, and if a stressful event occurred.
• Weekly Survey (12 items): adapted from previous studies, covering perceived stress, depression, anxiety, emotional well-being, coping mechanisms, and other relevant factors.
• Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10): this well-established tool will be administered monthly to assess the overall level of perceived stress across participants (T0, T30, T60, T90).
• Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI): also administered monthly to evaluate sleep quality across participants over the previous 30 days (T0, T30, T60, T90).

The Study Protocols have been finalized and approved by the relevant Ethics Committees in both participating Countries.

The primary objective of the study is to determine whether passive data from smartwatches can be effectively used to profile individual risk and resilience factors linked to stress, with the aim of assessing their potential for integration into the final version of the IMMEDIATE Project app.

This initiative marks a significant advancement in the integration of wearable technologies into occupational health research. By combining passive data collected through smartwatches with self-reported information from questionnaires, the study will offer a comprehensive view of whether these objective measures can be correlated with subjective perceptions. This may help shed light on the mechanisms of stress, recovery, and resilience. It also creates new opportunities to explore connections between lived experiences and physiological responses.