Smartwatches for Disease Prevention

From tracking heart rate to oxygen saturation and step count, smartwatches can play a big role in supporting the ever-increasing national burden of chronic disease – but what steps are needed for clinical regulation to get us there?

The ‘real world’, everyday data coming from smartwatches can help clinicians to “predict, risk, intervene and prevent adverse clinical outcomes… known as a predict-prevent model of health care,” reports an article recently published in the Medical Journal of Australia.

Yet the variability and accuracy of devices and their metrics means that incorporating such data into clinical diagnosis is difficult, and very few health diagnostic smartphone apps are currently approved by the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).

Increasing evidence points to the notion that “patient-generated real world health data, including smartwatch-derived data, helps patients make sense of their health, enhances trust with care providers, and enables autonomy,” the article states, and that delivering “a comprehensive analysis of an individual’s health in real time could enable individualised care for people with chronic disease.”

Current barriers to the use of smartwatches within existing healthcare systems are identified as data accuracy, interoperability, data familiarity, equity and accessibility, and implantation.

Under a roadmap proposed by the authors, with more research and investment into digital health comes the real possibility for clinical integration of smartwatches as a tool for chronic disease prevention.

Access the full article from the Medical Journal of Australia here.