JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Wearable healthcare devices offer tremendous promise to improve the health and well-being of individuals. Despite growing popularity of wearable healthcare devices, we have limited understanding about the actual use of these devices by US adults, and the key factors affecting the use.

Objective:

1. To examine the usage patterns of wearable healthcare devices (use of wearable healthcare devices, frequency of their use and willingness to share health data from wearable with a provider) 2. To assess the associations between a set of predictors that pertain to personal demographics (age, gender, race, education, marital status and household income), individual's health (general health, presence of chronic conditions, weight perceptions and frequency of provider visits), technology self-efficacy and attitude towards exercise, with use of wearable healthcare device.

Methods:

We use data from National Cancer Institute’s Health Information National Trends Survey–5, Cycle 3 (HINTS), collected from January to April 2019 to examine our research questions. Multivariate logistic regression model is used to assess the associations between predictor variables and wearable use.

Results:

About 30% US adults use wearable healthcare devices. Among the users, nearly half (47.33%) use the devices every day with a majority (82.38%) willing to share the health data from wearables with their care providers. Women (16.25%), Whites (19.74%), adults aged between 18-50 (19.52%), those with some level of college education or college graduates (25.6%), and annual household incomes above $75K (17.66%) were most likely to report using wearable healthcare devices. We found that use of wearables declines with age: adults aged over 50 are less likely to use wearables as compared to those who are aged between 18-34 (Odds ratio OR values between 0.46 to 0.57. Women (OR = 1.26; 95% CI 0.96 -1.65), Whites (OR = 1.65; 95% CI 0.97 - 2.79), college graduates (OR = 1.05; 95% CI 0.31-3.51), and those annual household incomes above $75K (OR = 2.6; 95% CI 1.39 - 4.86 ) are more likely to use wearables. US adults who felt healthier (OR = 1.17; 95% CI 0.98 - 1.39), overweight (OR = 1.16; 95% CI = 1.06-1.27), enjoyed exercise (OR = 1.23; 95% CI 1.06 - 1.43) and those with higher levels of technology self-efficacy (OR = 1.33; 95% CI 1.21 - 1.46) are more likely to adopt and use wearables for tracking or monitoring their health .

Conclusions:

The potential of healthcare wearable devices is under realized with less than one-third of US adults actively using it. With only young, healthier, wealthier, educated, techno-literate adults using wearables, other groups have been left behind. More concentrated efforts by clinicians, device makers and healthcare policy makers are needed to bridge this divide and improve the use of wearable devices among larger sections of American society.