In 2010, Gary Wolfe, then editor of Wired magazine, Presented a TED talk. It is alleged in Cannes “Quantity itself”. It was about what he called a “new trend” amongst tech enthusiasts. These early adopters were using gadgets to observe every thing from their physical data to their moods, and even the variety of nappies their babies used.
Wolff acknowledges that these people were outliers — tech geeks fascinated by data — but their behavior has permeated mainstream culture.
From smartwatches that track our steps and heart rate to fitness bands that track sleep patterns and calories burned, these gadgets are actually all over the place. Their popularity is symptomatic of the fashionable obsession with quantification—the concept that if something isn't logged, it doesn't count.
At least Half the people In any room there's likely a wearable device, comparable to a fitness tracker, that Quantifies an aspect. The wearables of their lives are being adopted. At a reminiscent pace With the cell phone boom of the late 2000s.
However, the quantified self movement remains to be stricken by a vital query: Can wearable devices truly measure what they claim?
With my colleagues Maximus Baldwin, Alison Keogh, Brian Caulfield and Rob Argent, I recently Published an umbrella review (A scientific review of systematic reviews) examined the scientific literature to find out whether consumer wearable devices can accurately measure metrics comparable to heart rate, aerobic capability, energy expenditure, sleep and step count.
At a superficial level, our results were quite positive. Accepting some error, wearable devices can measure heart rate with an error rate of plus or minus 3%, depending on aspects comparable to skin tone, exercise intensity and activity type. They may accurately measure heart rate variability and show good sensitivity and specificity for detecting arrhythmia, which is an issue with an individual's heart rate.
Additionally, they will accurately assess what's often known as cardiovascular fitness, which is how well the circulatory and respiratory systems deliver oxygen to the muscles during physical activity. This could be quantified by something called VO2Max, which is a measure of how much oxygen your body uses during exercise.
The wearable's ability to accurately measure that is improved when these predictions are generated during exercise (quite than at rest). In the realm of physical activity, wearables typically underestimate step count by about 9%.
Challenging effort
However, the discrepancies were greater for energy expenditure (the calories you burn while exercising), with margins of error starting from −21.27% to 14.76% depending on the device used and the activity performed.
Results for sleep weren't significantly better. Wearables typically account for greater than 10% of total sleep time and sleep efficiency. They also underestimate sleep onset latency (sleep latency) and wakefulness after sleep onset. Errors range from 12% to 180% compared to the gold standard measurement utilized in sleep studies, called polysonography.
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The conclusion is that despite the promising potential of wearables, we found it very difficult to conduct and synthesize research on this area. One obstacle we encountered was the inconsistent methodologies utilized by different research groups when validating a given instrument.
This lack of standardization results in inconsistent results and makes it difficult to attract definitive conclusions in regards to the instrument's validity. An ideal example of our research: one study may assess heart rate accuracy during high-intensity interval training, while one other study focuses on sedentary activities, leading to such discrepancies. Which can't be solved easily.
Other issues include various sample sizes, participant demographics, and experimental conditions—all of which add layers of complexity to the interpretation of our results.
What does this mean for me?
Perhaps most significantly, the rapid pace at which latest wearable devices are released exacerbates these problems. As most corporations follow an annual release cycle, we and other researchers find it difficult to maintain up. The timeline for planning a study, obtaining ethical approval, recruiting and testing participants, analyzing results, and publication can often exceed 12 months.
By the time the study is published, the device under investigation is probably going already obsolete, replaced by a latest model with possibly different features and performance characteristics. This is clear from our findings. Less than 5 percent of consumer wearables Those released thus far have been validated for the range of physiological signals they're intended to measure.
What do our results mean for you? As wearable technologies take over various features of health and lifestyle, it's necessary to view manufacturers' claims with a healthy dose of skepticism. Gaps in research, inconsistent methodologies, and the rapid pace of recent device releases underscore the necessity for more formal and standardized procedures for device validation.
The goal here is to foster collaboration between formal certification bodies, academic research consortia, popular media influencers and industry, in order that we are able to increase the depth and reach of wearable technology assessments.
Efforts are underway to determine A collaborative network That can foster a wealthy, multifaceted dialogue that resonates with a broad spectrum of stakeholders – ensuring that wearables should not just progressive gadgets, but trusted tools for health and wellness. are