Smartphones vs Wearable Devices for Remotely Monitoring Physical Activity After Hospital Discharge

Abstract

Patients discharged from the hospital using smartphones transmitted data for a greater duration and proportion of time, with a 32% relative increase in patients completing the 180-day period compared with those using wearables. This study is limited to physical activity data from patients at 1 health system. Wearables track behaviors that smartphones do not (eg, sleep), and future research will evaluate the usefulness of these data.5 Because smartphones are ubiquitious,1 our findings indicate that these devices could be a scalable approach for remotely monitoring patient health behaviors.