SMART WATCHES

                                                   SMART WATCHES

Smart watches have the ability to support health in everyday life: enabling self-monitoring of personal activity; Receiving feedback based on activity measures; Permitting in-situ surveys to identify patterns of behavior; And supporting bi-directional communication with health care providers and family members. However, smart watches are an emerging technology and research with these devices is in a nascent stage.

We conducted a systematic review of smart watch studies that engaged people in their use by searching the PubMed, Embase, IEEE XPlore and ACM digital libraries. Participant demographics were summarized by studies involving device features, clock applications and methods, and technical challenges.

Seventy-three studies were returned to the search. Seventeen published studies were included. The included studies were published from 2014 to 2016, with the exception of the one published in 2011. Most studies employed the use of consumer-grade smart watches (14/17, 82%). Patient-related studies focused on activity monitoring, heart rate monitoring, speech therapy adherence, diabetes self-management, and detection of seizures, tremors, scratches, eating, and drug-taking behaviors.Most patient-related studies enrolled participants with some exclusion criteria to validate the smart watch function (10/17, 58%). Only studies that focused on Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, and diabetes management enrolled individuals living with targeted conditions. One study focuses on nursing work in the ICU and one focuses on CPR training for laypersons.

Consumer-grade smart watches have made rapid inroads in the field of health research since 2014. Effectiveness in support of smart watch technical work, acceptability, and health must be validated in large field studies that nominate actual participants living with conditions that target these devices.