Design and implementation of a platform for the citizen science project migraine radar

Abstract

In this paper we introduce the design and technical implementation of the citizen science project Migraine Radar. The goal of the project is to establish a large collection of migraine attack data in order to explore the trigger factors of migraine attacks. A main focus is the investigation of the influence of environmental factors like weather or changes in the geomagnetic activity on the frequency of migraine attacks. After registering with the project, participants report their migraine attack data using a web app or one of the smartphone apps implemented for Android and iOS. As a benefit, the system serves as a personal headache calendar and participants have access to statistics and individualized reports about their attacks. For scientific analysis the data are pre-processed and provided to the researchers in an anonymized way.