Powerful but not Perfect: An Overview of Health Wearables

A personal trainer in your pocket. Microchips that monitor blood sugar. Baby thermometers — right on their tiny wrists. If these concepts sound strange, think again. They’re called wearables. And in the health and wellness scene, they’re making a big splash in a small way.

 

What’s a wearable?

As the name suggests, wearables are small digital devices designed to work with your wardrobe. You can strap them discreetly to your arm, belt buckle, or even your back. But although wearables can look cool, fashion isn’t the priority. They’re meant to bring you closer to good health by delivering data about your body.

Each product does it differently. Some help you count steps or calories burned during your fitness routine. Others track vital signs or medical conditions and may be able to send the information to your doctor.

Lately, “smart clothing” has even pushed wearables beyond the popular smartwatches and wrist devices. You can find yoga pants with sensors to help improve your form and swimsuits with ultraviolet monitors that tell you when it’s time for more sunscreen.

 

The benefits of wearables

While wearables can’t replace a visit to the doctor, they’re effective at keeping health top of mind.

Building health awareness

Fitness trackers were among the first wearables to catch on with consumers — and for good reason. Devices like the Fitbit and Apple Watch monitor your body to help calculate how active you are. 1 Steps you’ve taken today? Check out this graph. Calories burned? Here’s an estimate. Resting heart rate? Looks good from here!

And watches from Fitbit and Huami even have built-in thermometers, so they can note a rise in body temperature that might be a sign of a viral infection, like the flu.

Since wearables offer real-time feedback, it’s easy to stay in tune with the little things that make up a healthy day. Plus, personal reminders and alerts can help keep you accountable for your goals — and motivated to push past them.

Managing chronic conditions

Nowadays, wearables are finding many new ways to support health beyond vital signs and fitness measures. Some medical wearables even provide pocket-sized solutions to help care for ongoing conditions.

For example,  glucose-monitoring wearables  can help track your blood sugar (glucose) levels throughout the day. When prescribed by a doctor, they can even send the data to  your care team . Certain medical wearables are also available over the counter. They can send information to apps on your smart device to let you know if there’s an issue you should discuss with your doctor.

Devices like these are shaping the future of wearables by offering services you could previously only get at the doctor’s office. Before getting started with a medical-grade wearable, make sure to talk with your doctor to see what’s right for you.

Supporting medical research

Many clinical studies use wearable data to fuel research for a healthier tomorrow.

A recent study at Stanford University looked at smartwatch data from more than 5,000 participants. The goal was to see if the data could help anticipate when someone might be getting sick with COVID-19. For people who got sick, the information showed signs of infection about 4 days before they reported symptoms. 2 More research is needed, but promising results like these might eventually lead to exciting new wearable features for consumers.

Also, at the University of Michigan, researchers recruited a diverse group of nearly 7,000 people to wear Apple Watches in a study investigating underlying health conditions across different populations. 3 Crowdsourced data like this is powerful stuff. It’s easy to gather and can come from a large number of people, places, and populations — which can bring better diversity, accuracy, and health outcomes to research efforts.

 

4 considerations when using wearables

Notifications! Achievements! Numbers! Higher and higher and higher they go! Wearables work by creating a positive feedback loop that makes you feel great about your progress. But there’s a difference between healthy application and overdependence on your device.

Keep a few things in mind:

Forget the “all or nothing” attitude

Wearable tech can offer an amazing, at-a-glance reminder of daily fitness goals. But it’s easy to trap yourself into an unhealthy mindset where finishing those goals needs to happen no matter what. This can lead to stress and overexertion.

If you’re chasing a high step count, for example, remember to focus more on the steps you’ve completed, rather than the ones you’re missing. When it comes to health, all progress is good progress. Even if your wearable doesn’t say so.

Know the limits

As much as we’d like wearables to be 100% accurate, they aren’t. In one study, 7 wrist-worn fitness trackers missed the mark by over 20% when it came to measuring calories burned. 4

So, be sure to use wearable data as a guide, not your only source of truth.

Complement, don’t substitute

Even though many wearables are helpful, they don’t offer the depth of service you can expect at medical facilities. When you don’t have access to screenings, lab tests, and physicals, you’re simply not getting the full picture of your health.

Don’t become too dependent on your wearable data. It’s best to use it to complement the care you already get — not as a substitute for visiting a doctor.

Listen to your body

Whether you’ve maxed out your day’s steps or hit the sweet spot on your blood sugar levels, it’s important to know wearables can’t speak for the whole you. If your smartwatch says you’re doing great, but something doesn’t feel right, listen to your body. Go see your doctor.

Today’s wearables aren’t perfect. But they’re getting smarter every year. And for many, these devices already work wonders by connecting them to health in a way that’s just right for their lifestyle. - Kaiser Permanente

 

1 Kaiser Permanente does not endorse the medications or products mentioned. Any trade names listed are for easy identification only.

2 Matthew Hutson,  “The Dash to Adapt Smartwatches to Help Detect COVID Infections,”  Knowable Magazine, January 27, 2021.

3 Jessica R. Golbus, MD, et al.,  “Wearable Device Signals and Home Blood Pressure Data Across Age, Sex, Race, Ethnicity, and Clinical Phenotypes in the Michigan Predictive Activity & Clinical Trajectories in Health (MIPACT) Study: A Prospective, Community-Based Observational Study,”  The Lancet Digital Health, November 2021.

4 Anna Shcherbina et al.,  “Accuracy in Wrist-Worn, Sensor-Based Measurements of Heart Rate and Energy Expenditure in a Diverse Cohort,”   Journal of Personalized Medicine, 2017.