Mission Statement

The mission of CMSA is to advance the use of mobile technologies for medical, behavioral, social and public health research and promote collaboration among Institutes and ORUs in the Jacobs School of Engineering, the School of Medicine and the general UCSD campus, as well as Centers in the IEM, in these areas. 

CMSA’s efforts are crosscutting and intended to help ensure that the “whole” of the efforts of the IEM and the other units at UCSD is greater than the sum of the parts. CMSA will focus on systems-level approaches to health and healthcare where multiple levels and types of expertise in addition to engineering and medicine are involved, including qualitative, quantitative and mixed-methods research about how people use and benefit from mobile technologies. CMSA will develop and support a cadre of research-ready clinicians, behavioral, social and public health scientists at UCSD and Rady Children’s Hospital who conduct clinical trials and other studies that are based in part or in whole on the application of mobile technologies in health. 

CMSA will also focus on ethical, legal and social issues related to mobile health research and practice. This is a field in considerable flux at present with respect to areas of privacy, data ownership and sharing, and informed consent and other methodological issues that support the “24 X 7” nature of ubiquitous monitoring and interventions in health. Partnering with scientists and other scholars in social and cultural domains can help advance the use of new technologies and the data they create as well as lessen the likelihood of unintended consequences.