Study Explores Smartwatch Potential In Health Care
Smartwatches may soon benefit busy healthcare professionals and their patients, said Ruhi Bajaj, a researcher at the business school and lead author of a preliminary study examining the potential role of these devices in health.
Integrating smartwatch data into clinical care and electronic medical records can provide a more complete picture of an individual's health and complement standard clinical data. According to Ruhi, it can increase the efficiency of healthcare by empowering patients or clients to self-care and automating certain diagnostic procedures.
However, concerns about interpretation of smartwatch data analytics and potential increased workload are barriers to integrating smartwatch data into workflows.
Likewise, Ruhi's research aims to design, develop and test a health monitoring tool using smartwatch data analytics to support clinical decision making by healthcare professionals. The study was published in the March 2023 issue of the journal Future Internet .
In the first round, Ruhi, Dr. Fernando Beltran, and Dr. Rebecca Mering used a collaborative design approach to better understand the needs of eight health care providers in Oakland. A general practitioner, a physiotherapist, four clinical exercise physiologists and two fitness trainers participated.
Teachers discussed their need for an app that would allow them to monitor, interpret and make decisions based on smartwatch data.
Participants were asked to respond to various areas, including data accuracy, potential benefits and barriers to integration into the healthcare setting, and how they would like to display data on the application website.
The researchers also asked what data professionals perceive to be of value, what types of anomalies they want to highlight in a summary report, who should see a summary report, and whether they want an alert feature to report unusual events in the data. .
According to the participants, heart rate is currently the most useful parameter for data visualization and detecting abnormalities. They indicated that they prefer to see summary reports in graphs and bar charts.
Using the insights gained, we developed a prototype app that uses machine learning to visualize long-term smartwatch data, detect heart rhythm abnormalities, and allow healthcare providers to communicate concerns to clients or patients.
Data from Fitbit users, collected over five months, was used to develop and build a machine learning predictive model to detect irregular heart rate over time based on heart rate, calorie, step and distance data. A scorecard has been developed to show health professionals the potential for false positive screening.
At the final stage of the study, ten healthcare providers completed a questionnaire to evaluate the prototype, and more than 60% rated it positively in terms of usability. Overall, Ruhi said, the prototype has been well received, with some positive feedback about integrating smartwatch data into clinical practice.
An interesting finding answers the question: who should see the summary reports and interpret the machine learning algorithms to take further action?
"As we expected, as the workload increased, some health professionals indicated that they wanted to create a new position, a role where the person with technical skills and medical knowledge sits between the medical service provider and the patient or client, and who can evaluate the results and inform the doctor when medical intervention is needed. .'
Ruhi was inspired to undertake the research project by observing the struggles of the healthcare industry and pondering the role of digital healthcare technology and how it can help reduce workload and improve patient care.
"Wearable devices from Fitbit, Apple, and Samsung are on the market, some of which are not very expensive. Over time, as sensor technology advances, the accuracy and reliability of smartwatch data will improve. In addition to improving machine learning algorithms and new roles in healthcare, wearable products They have the potential to transform our healthcare models from reactive to proactive and proactive.
More information: Ruhi Kiran Bajaj et al., Co-design, development and evaluation of a health monitoring device with smartwatch data: A proof-of-concept study, Future Internet (2023). DOI: 10.3390/fi15030111
Cite: Study explores smartwatch potential for health care (May 29, 2023) Retrieved June 1, 2023 from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-05-explores-smartwatch-potential-health.html.
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