Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Mar 10, 2021
Open Peer Review Period: Mar 9, 2021 - May 4, 2021
Date Accepted: Jun 11, 2021
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Consumer Wearables and the Integration of New Objective Measures in Oncology: Patient and Provider Perspectives
ABSTRACT
Background:
With one in five adults in the United States owning a smartwatch or fitness tracker, these devices are poised to impact all aspects of medicine by offering a more objective approach to replace self-reported data. Oncology has proved to be a prototypical example, offering immediate benefits to patients and oncologists with the ability to track symptoms and health metrics in real-time.
Objective:
The aim of this study is to review the recent literature on consumer-grade wearables and its current applications in cancer from the perspective of both the patient and the provider.
Methods:
A search for articles containing “smartwatch,” “wearable,” or “Fitbit” matched with either “cancer” or “oncology” in the last five years was conducted in PubMed and Google Scholar with an emphasis on the most recent articles. Additionally, a search through the Apple app store and Google Play store for “cancer” was performed.
Results:
The relevant studies suggest an overall positive impact of consumer wearables in oncology. These devices offer benefits such as improved medication adherence and accuracy of symptom tracking over self-reported data, as well as offering insights that increase patient empowerment. Physical activity consistently correlated with stronger patient outcomes, and a patient’s real-time metrics were found to be capable of tracking medication side effects and toxicity. Studies have made associations between wearable data and telomere shortening, cardiovascular disease, alcohol consumption, sleep apnea, and other conditions.
Conclusions:
The objective data obtained by the wearable presents a more complete picture of an individual’s health than the snapshot of a 15-minute office visit and a single set of vital signs. Real-time metrics can be translated into a digital phenotype that identifies risk factors specific to each patient, and shared risk factors across one’s social network may uncover common environmental exposures detrimental to one’s health. Wearable data and its upcoming integration with social media will be the foundation for the next generation of personalized medicine.
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.