Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Mar 17, 2025
Date Accepted: Nov 25, 2025
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
Wearable Devices for Remote Monitoring of Chronic Diseases: A Systematic Review
ABSTRACT
Background:
Wearable devices enable the remote collection of health parameters, supporting the outpatient plans recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) to manage chronic diseases. While disease-specific monitoring is accurate, a comprehensive analysis of wearables across various chronic diseases helps to standardize remote patient monitoring (RPM) systems.
Objective:
This review aims to identify wearables for remote monitoring of chronic diseases, focusing on (i) wearable devices, (ii) sensor types, (iii) health parameters, (iv) body locations, and (v) medical applications.
Methods:
We develop a search strategy and conduct searches across three databases: PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus. After reviewing 1,160 articles, we select 61 that address cardiovascular, cancer, neurological, metabolic, respiratory, and other diseases. We create a data analysis method based on our five objectives to organize the articles for a comprehensive analysis.
Results:
From the 61 articles, 39 use wearable bands such as smartwatches, wristbands, armbands, and straps to monitor chronic diseases. Wearable devices commonly include various sensor types, such as accelerometers (39/61), photoplethysmographic (PPG) sensors (18/61), biopotential meters (17/61), pressure meters (11/61), and thermometers (9/61). These sensors collect diverse health parameters, such as acceleration (39/61), heart rate (24/61), body temperature (9/61), blood pressure (8/61), and peripheral oxygen saturation (SpO₂) (7/61). Common sensor body locations are the wrist, followed by the upper arm, and the chest. The medical applications of wearable devices are neurological (21/61) and cardiovascular diseases (15/61). Additionally, researchers apply wearable devices for wellness and lifestyle monitoring (39/61), mostly activity (39/39) and sleep (10/39).
Conclusions:
This review underscores that wearable devices primarily function as bands, commonly worn on the wrist, to monitor chronic diseases. These devices collect acceleration, heart rate, body temperature, blood pressure, and SpO₂, focusing on neurological disorders and cardiovascular diseases. Our findings establish a baseline for identifying health parameters remotely collected by wearables across various chronic diseases, providing insights for standardizing RPM systems.
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