Smart Devices
Sonya Collins
Pharmacists may be seeing an increasing number of smartwatches on the wrists of patients as they pick up their prescription bags off the counter. More than one in five U.S. adults wear a smartwatch or fitness tracker such as a FitBit or Apple Watch, according to Pew Research Center. To what degree those adults take advantage of the many health-related functions of their fitness tracker is less clear.
“Wearable tech can give us so much information, but we don’t know how to apply all of it in an actionable way,” said Justin Roethlingshoefer, founder of Own It, a global health and wellness company that uses data and personal metrics to create personalized plans for long-term lifestyle change.
Wearable tech may present a new opportunity for pharmacists to discuss better health and chronic disease management with their patients. These devices include several features that may give patients, in broad strokes, an overall picture of their health or enhance their pre-existing chronic disease management plan. But patients should understand that wearable tech is not as accurate as the tools that health professionals use to collect the same data. The devices may flag an issue that a patient might raise with their physician or pharmacist, but it won’t diagnose a problem.
These are the health-related features commonly found in major fitness tracker brands.
Physical activity tracking. Activity trackers do more than count steps. They log workouts of all sorts, from rowing and cycling to surfing and high-intensity interval training. When users set daily activity goals, the tracker can ping them at certain points throughout the day to alert them that they haven’t met the day’s goal yet.
The awareness of daily movement and activity alone may be enough to get some users moving. A 2020 metaanalysis in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity found that activity trackers increase physical activity and help improve blood pressure, weight circumference, and LDL cholesterol in adults with chronic diseases.
Calories burned. While there has been much debate as to the accuracy of in-device calorie counters, this feature can give users a ballpark idea of how many—or how few—calories their daily activities burn in comparison with their calorie intake.
“You’re not going to be able to eat a 100-calorie cookie and then know exactly how much you would have to walk to burn 100 calories, but it will help with the general big picture,” said Albert Titus, PhD, chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University at Buffalo.
Sleep quality. As poor sleep is a risk factor for numerous health conditions, it’s a good idea for people to have a sense of how well they are doing in this arena. Wearable tech can detect the onset of sleep, measure its duration, and track activity throughout the night. This metric tends to be more accurate than some of the other data that wearable tech can collect.
“When you’re sleeping, the conditions are even better for the device to work versus when you are up running and jumping around,” Titus said.
Heart-rate variability. This measure can indicate whether the body is in fight-or-flight mode. Low variability can be an indication of chronic stress—a risk factor for numerous health conditions and a trigger for flares of others.
“It’s a key metric that impacts everyone, whether you are a person with diabetes, a casual weekend warrior, or a professional athlete,” Roethlingshoefer said.
Electrodermal activity. Another indicator of stress, electrodermal activity is a measure of electrical changes in the skin due to sweat. Combined with heart-rate variability, the reading may give users a better sense of their stress level.
Blood-oxygen level. A watch’s reading of blood-oxygen level won’t be as accurate as that of a pulse oximeter but, again, could flag an issue for further investigation with more sophisticated tools.
Respiration rate. Taken during sleep, this reading tends to be one of the more accurate ones. A higher respiration rate can be an indication of a fever or other illnesses or medical conditions.
ECG. If a patient and doctor suspect that a patient has atrial fibrillation, in-device ECGs can help patients loosely keep tabs on the issue and share the information with their provider.
Companion apps. Users can log other health data, such as blood sugar readings and menstrual cycles, in smartphone-based smartwatch apps to keep all their information in one place. Apps also allow for sharing data with health care providers or caregivers.
While wearable tech may not yet provide precise numbers on all the measures it takes, it does a good job of capturing trends over time. These can be an indication of the direction in which a person’s overall health is headed, and that increased awareness could be useful for almost anyone. ■