What do doctors think about smart watches and rings that measure their owner's vital signs?

Electronic accessories, among which smart watches have become the most popular today, are a multi-billion dollar industry. Gadgets that have gained popularity in recent years offer simple and affordable ways to monitor health. But are they as effective as their manufacturers claim, found out with the BBC.

Photo: Khairil Azhar Junos | Dreamstime.com

Many premium devices claim to accurately track exercise patterns, body temperature, heart rate, menstrual cycle, sleep patterns, and more.

British Health Secretary Wes Streeting has outlined a proposal to provide wearable devices to millions of NHS patients in England so they can track symptoms such as their response to cancer treatment from home. (NHS patients are people who receive healthcare through the UK's National Health Service. The NHS is the nation's tax-funded healthcare system that provides a wide range of services. – Approx. Ed.)

But many doctors and tech experts remain wary of using health data from wearables.

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"I'm currently testing a smart ring from Ultrahuman — and it seems to know I'm getting sick before I do," writes author Zoe Kleinmann. "One weekend, it alerted me to a slight fever and restless sleep. The device noted that this could be a sign that I was starting to get sick.

I mumbled something about perimenopausal symptoms and ignored the warning. But two days later, I was in bed with the stomach flu. I didn’t need medical attention, but if I had, would the data from my wearable have helped health care workers?

Many wearable technology brands actively encourage the use of gadgets to record physical metrics so that they can later be shown to the doctor.

For example, the Oura smart ring offers a service where patients can upload their data as a report to share with their doctor.

Dr Jake Deutsch, a US doctor who advises Oura, says data from wearables allows him to "more accurately assess overall health", but not all doctors agree it's actually useful.

Dr Helen Salisbury is a GP in Oxford. She says she doesn't see many patients coming in waving their wearables yet. But she has noticed an increase, which worries her.

"I think in most cases this kind of intense monitoring is actually harmful. I worry that we're building a society of hypochondria and over-policing of our bodies," she said.

According to Dr. Salisbury, there are many reasons why we temporarily receive abnormal data, such as an elevated heart rate. This could be due to a malfunction in our body or a malfunctioning device.

"I'm concerned that we're going to encourage people to constantly monitor everything and see a doctor every time the device thinks they're sick, rather than when they think they are," the doctor said.

She also emphasizes the psychological effect of using this data as a kind of insurance policy against shocking diagnoses. For example, if a cancerous tumor is not detected by a smartwatch, a person will continue to live without thinking about new unpleasant symptoms.

Wearables encourage good habits, but the best you can get out of them is the same advice we've been hearing from doctors for years anyway.

"What you can really do is walk more, don't drink too much alcohol, try to maintain a healthy weight. That's always going to happen," Dr Salisbury concluded.

The Apple Watch is reportedly the best-selling smartwatch in the world, although sales have slowed recently.

The tech giant uses real stories of people whose lives were saved by the heart rate monitoring feature in its marketing, but does not mention any false positives.

More often than not, when patients present their data to health care professionals, doctors prefer to try to recreate it using their own equipment rather than simply trusting what a smart gadget has recorded.

There are several practical reasons for this, says Dr Yan Wei, associate professor of wearable technologies at Nottingham Trent University.

"When you go to the hospital and measure your electrocardiogram, you don't worry about power consumption because the device is plugged in," he explained. "With your watch, you won't be measuring your ECG continuously because you're draining the battery right away."

Additionally, movement (not just of the wearable itself, such as on the wrist, but also the overall movement of the person wearing it) can create “noise” in the data collected, making it less reliable. The gold standard for measuring heart rate, Dr. Yan Wei noted, is measuring it on the wrist or directly at the heart. If you measure it with a “smart ring” on your finger, you sacrifice accuracy.

There is no international standard for wearables, he said — not for the sensors and software that power wearables, not for the data itself, not even for the format in which it is collected.

The more consistently the device is worn, the more accurate its data is likely to be.

But here's one interesting story.

Ben Wood was away on the day his wife received a series of alarming notifications from his Apple Watch telling her he had been in a car crash. The watch advised her to text him rather than call because he might have to keep the line open for emergency services.

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The alerts were genuine, and were sent to her as Ben’s emergency contact. But in this case, that was unnecessary. Ben was on a race track, driving some fast cars. He admitted he was “not very advanced” at it, but said he always felt safe.

“The boundaries between an incident and a warning need to be carefully managed,” Ben wrote in a blog post. “I’m curious to see what device makers, emergency services, first responders, and individuals think about this technology in the future.”

Pritesh Mistry, a digital research fellow at the Kings Fund, agrees that there are significant challenges in integrating real-time patient data into the healthcare system. He concludes by stressing that the debate on this issue has been ongoing in the UK for several years, with no clear solution yet.

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