The Boom in Wearable Technology: Cause for Alarm or Just What is Needed to Better Understand Sleep?

Wearable technology is ubiquitous in western society. Millions of low-cost, high-tech devices have been sold worldwide and consumers are using them to monitor multiple health-related signals, including sleep.1–3 In clinical settings, patients presenting with various sleep disturbances increasingly show up with data from wearables on their smart phones. Clinicians are often befuddled when asked to interpret these data because there are no accepted guidelines or standards on how to interpret it, in part because the FDA does not regulate consumer-level wearables that provide “general wellness” information.3 Although the majority of the wearable technology industry claim that their products are not intended for scientific or medical purposes, researchers and clinicians focusing on sleep are waking up to the idea that these inexpensive tools could be used to monitor research participants and patients, and have begun using wearables in research and clinical practice. Given the widespread use and popularity of these devices, they could also be a new resource for healthcare providers to track a patient's behavior, such as sleep patterns, in relation to disease progression or treatment over a long period of time. Thus, wearables are not only consumer products but are also part of the health information technology revolution that aims to improve health information management, prevent medical errors and reduce health care costs.