Key result
In-ear devices show promise for unobtrusive physiological monitoring of temperature, heart rate, and oxygen saturation during daily activities, though measurement accuracy needs improvement in challenging environmental scenarios.
Why the study?
Hearables offer technical and physiological advantages for prolonged monitoring, but the available evidence on their use and performance across sport science, occupational medicine, and extreme environments needed synthesis.
Does in-ear monitoring accurately measure physiological parameters compared to standard reference sites in healthy subjects?
Systematic Review (n=39)
Does in-ear monitoring accurately measure physiological parameters compared to standard reference sites in healthy subjects?
In-ear devices offer a promising, unobtrusive method for monitoring physiological parameters like temperature and heart rate, though accuracy in challenging environments requires further technological improvement.
In-ear hearables may enable unobtrusive long-term monitoring; leaves open validation for clinical, sports, and extreme-environment use.
Technological advancements are opening the possibility of prolonged monitoring of physiological parameters under daily-life conditions, with potential applications in sport science and medicine, and in extreme environments. Among emerging wearable technologies, in-ear devices or hearables possess technical advantages for long-term monitoring, such as non-invasivity, unobtrusivity, good fixing, and reduced motion artifacts, as well as physiological advantages related to the proximity of the ear to the body trunk and the shared vasculature between the ear and the brain. The present scoping review was aimed at identifying and synthesizing the available evidence on the use and performance of in-ear monitoring of physiological parameters, with focus on applications in sport science, sport medicine, occupational medicine, and extreme environment settings. Pubmed, Scopus, and Web of Science electronic databases were systematically searched to identify studies conducted in the last 10 years and addressing the measurement of three main physiological parameters (temperature, heart rate, and oxygen saturation) in healthy subjects. Thirty-nine studies were identified, 24 performing temperature measurement, 12 studies on heart/pulse rate, and three studies on oxygen saturation. The collected evidence supports the premise of in-ear sensors as an innovative and unobtrusive way for physiological monitoring during daily-life and physical activity, but further research and technological advancement are necessary to ameliorate measurement accuracy especially in more challenging scenarios.
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Masè et al. (2020) conducted a systematic review in Healthy subjects (n=39). In-ear devices (hearables) vs. Reference measurements from other body sites was evaluated on Accuracy and performance of in-ear physiological monitoring. In-ear devices show promise for unobtrusive physiological monitoring of temperature, heart rate, and oxygen saturation during daily activities, though measurement accuracy needs improvement in challenging environmental scenarios.
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