Fitabase has collected over 2 billion minutes of data from users who actively wear their Fitbit activity trackers to measure sleep, activity and more. Such data has been pulled for studies on spine surgeries like that of the Northwestern Medicine and the University of California San Francisco's work.

This isn't the first time this sort of data has been gathered from a wearable or portable device, such as with Apple's ResearchKit, but it does call into question how reliable the data actually is. When Fitbits will measure steps when I'm wearing it and typing vigorously, is that data still viable for clinical trials?

Either way, this is an interesting step for Fitbit to take, especially with so many users out there and various trackers to take advantage of.