Thryve & Robert Koch Institute: Movement and Sleep in Germany

For decades, the backbone of public health research has been traditional surveys: asking people how much they move, how long they sleep, and how healthy they feel. While historically valuable, this approach leaves large gaps: memories fade, habits are misremembered, and the resulting data often paints an incomplete picture. In an era where prevention and personalization matter more than ever, Germany needed a more reliable way to analyze movements and sleep behavior at the population level using wearable devices.

That is why the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany’s national public health institute, launched the ambitious “Bewegung und Schlaf in Deutschland” (Movement and Sleep in Germany) project. By leveraging wearable technology and Thryve’s secure data infrastructure, the study set out to capture authentic, continuous insights into the everyday behaviors of the German population at scale.

The Partnership 

Robert Koch Institute, with over 125 years of experience safeguarding public health, is responsible for shaping the policies that guide vaccination programs, chronic disease prevention, and health equity initiatives nationwide. In addition to its long-running “Gesundheit in Deutschland” surveys, RKI sought to modernize its methods and build the first national dataset grounded in objective movement and sleep data.

With Thryve as its technology partner, RKI integrated wearables into its research design. Instead of relying only on participant recollections, the study introduced sensor-based data collection, providing policymakers, clinicians, and researchers with far richer evidence.

The Challenge:

Traditional health surveys suffer from a critical limitation: people don’t always report their behaviors accurately. Many overestimate their daily activity or miscalculate how much they sleep. For public health, this means interventions are often based on flawed assumptions.

RKI wanted to establish a gold-standard baseline: precise, population-wide data on how Germans move, rest, and recover. But achieving this raised challenges:

• Distributing and collecting devices at scale
• Ensuring participants could contribute without added effort
• Meeting the highest standards of GDPR compliance and data security
• Standardizing data from thousands of individuals for scientific use

The Solution: A Digital Infrastructure for Scale

Together, Thryve and RKI designed a seamless system that allowed thousands of participants to be equipped with fitness trackers and contribute high-quality data effortlessly.

• Device Rollout: Participants were mailed wrist-worn trackers, which they wore continuously for two weeks.
• Seamless Integration: Companion apps like Withings Health and Pulsatio handled synchronization, ensuring smooth and secure transfers.
• Passive Data Flow: Continuous monitoring meant no manual input was required—reducing participant burden while increasing data quality.
• Participant Engagement: A small financial incentive and access to personal health insights encouraged ongoing compliance.

Thryve’s API ensured standardized, anonymized, and GDPR-compliant data handling, providing researchers with datasets ready for robust scientific analysis.

The Results: 

The study has already surpassed 1,000 participants and continues to grow, generating one of the most comprehensive datasets on German health behavior to date.

Highlights include:

• Establishing national reference points for daily activity and sleep
• Revealing patterns across demographics such as age, gender, and region
• Validating wearables as a reliable tool for future national health research
• Offering a blueprint for digital-first cohort studies in Europe and beyond

By moving from recollection-based surveys to evidence rooted in lived experience, RKI is building a more accurate foundation for health policy.

Public health thrives on good data. The better the evidence, the more effective the prevention strategies. The RKI project demonstrates how modern tools like wearables, combined with Thryve’s infrastructure, can elevate public health research to a new level.

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