Smartwatch interventions in healthcare: A systematic review of the literature

Objective: The use of smartwatches has attracted considerable interest in developing smart digital health interventions and improving health and well-being during the past few years. This work presents a systematic review of the literature on smartwatch interventions in healthcare. The main characteristics and individual health-related outcomes of smartwatch interventions within research studies are illustrated, in order to acquire evidence of their benefit and value in patient care.

Methods: A literature search in the bibliographic databases of PubMed and Scopus was conducted following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, in order to identify research studies incorporating smartwatch interventions. The studies were grouped according to the intervention's target disease, main smartwatch features, study design, target age and number of participants, follow-up duration, and outcome measures.

Results: The literature search identified 13 interventions incorporating smartwatches within research studies with people of middle and older age. The interventions targeted different conditions: cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, depression, stress and anxiety, metastatic gastrointestinal cancer and breast cancer, knee arthroplasty, chronic stroke, and allergic rhinitis. The majority of the studies (76%) were randomized controlled trials. The most used smartwatch was the Apple Watch utilized in 4 interventions (31%). Positive outcomes for smartwatch interventions concerned foot ulcer recurrence, severity of symptoms of depression, utilization of healthcare resources, lifestyle changes, functional assessment and shoulder range of motion, medication adherence, unplanned hospital readmissions, atrial fibrillation diagnosis, adherence to self-monitoring, and goal attainment for emotion regulation. Challenges in using smartwatches included frequency of charging, availability of Internet and synchronization with a mobile app, the burden of using a smartphone in addition to a patient's regular phone, and data quality.

Conclusion: The results of this review indicate the potential of smartwatches to bring positive health-related outcomes for patients. Considering the low number of studies identified in this review along with their moderate quality, we implore the research community to carry out additional studies in intervention settings to show the utility of smartwatches in clinical contexts.