Los Angeles-based Cedars –Sinai Medical center and UCLA experimenters are describing that a (consumer-grade) Fitbit tracker can be used in some Remote patient Monitoring programs if health professionals know the clinical limitation of the mobile health wearables.  The researchers outlined the 90-day study and concluded that the Fitbit data could be used to identify trends that call for health professional involvement

Cedars-Sinai has been actively involved in consumer-grade wearables research; they reported that the mhealth device market hadn’t yet proven staunch for RPM programs. But the new study finds that the Fitbit can assist suppliers to keep tabs on their patients at home.

The researchers enlisted some 200 patients with IHD, and made them wear Fitbit charge 2 trackers for 90 days.  The report showed that the 186 patients still in the program had an attachment rate of 90% tremendously higher than those earlier reported in telemonitoring. And the rate of attenuation was measured at .09 percent per day

The researchers said “Our investigation used a single device with high benefits, which easier the task of remote monitoring,” “The potential  of the device to concurrently record multiple variables such as (heart rate) and accelerometer data also allowed us to more accurately determine the patient’s state, whether he/she is active, sedentary, asleep, or not currently using the device.”

In addition, because researchers were able to easily ingress activity data, they could locate patients who were starting to lose interest in wearing their Fitbit and send reminders.  The study also offered clues as to how Fitbit data should be used.