SUMMARY
Emma Fortune Ngufor, Ph.D., focuses her research on advancing digital health to improve clinical outcomes and promote healthy aging. Her work emphasizes the use of wearable sensors and real-world data to objectively measure movement, sleep, heart rate and stress. The goal is to understand how these factors relate to clinical outcomes. She uses an interdisciplinary approach that integrates remote monitoring technologies, clinical data, and advanced analytics — such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning — to create a more comprehensive and clinically meaningful picture of patient health. Her research has applications in aging, rehabilitation and chronic disease management, with a strong focus on identifying early markers of functional decline to support timely and preventive interventions.
Focus areas
- Digital health and wearable technologies. Dr. Fortune Ngufor develops and validates sensor-based algorithms to monitor physical activity and function, sleep, heart rate, and stress in real-world settings. Evaluating usability, adherence and patient experience is also key to ensure digital health tools are accessible, acceptable and effective in real-world care.
- Musculoskeletal health and aging. Dr. Fortune Ngufor investigates how daily activity patterns affect bone and muscle health, risk of falls and fractures, and functional decline. Her goal is to identify early risk signals that can inform timely and preventive care. This work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health and the Mayo Clinic Center for Women's Health.
- Remote patient monitoring and rehabilitation. Dr. Fortune Ngufor studies the design and implementation of home-based assessment tools for clinical populations to track recovery, mobility and sleep. She applies machine learning methods to integrate wearable and clinical data, enabling the identification of patients at high risk and the prediction of clinical outcomes. This work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health.
- Health care delivery and workforce well-being. Using wearable technologies, Dr. Fortune Ngufor assesses ergonomic risk and physical and cognitive workload among healthcare professionals. These findings can help identify early signs of strain and fatigue, enabling targeted interventions to prevent work-related injuries and reduce burnout.
Significance to patient care
Dr. Fortune Ngufor studies new ways to understand patients' health in their daily lives, not just during clinic visits. She uses wearable devices and health data to track changes over time. By combining these data with AI, she helps find early signs of health decline and identify patients at higher risk. Her work also supports more-personalized care and better rehabilitation plans. She focuses on making these tools easy to use so they can work well in real-world settings. Overall, her research helps move healthcare toward preventing health decline and improving long-term health rather than reacting to health changes.
Professional highlights
- Associate editor, Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, 2018-present.
- Mayo Clinic:
- BIRCWH Scholar, Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women's Health Program, Women's Health Research Center, 2020-2023.
- SCORE Scholar, Specialized Centers of Research Excellence on Sex Differences Program, 2020-2022.