Fitbit says its devices shouldn’t be used for medical or scientific reasons. Thanks to their low cost and high ease of use, researchers are thinking about doing so anyway. There’s just one problem: The results probably can’t be trusted.
Fitbit / Michelle Rial / BuzzFeed
For Dr. Amy Gelfand, who's studying sleep patterns in kids with episodic migraines, Fitbits are an ideal research tool in many ways. Fitbit says its devices aren't designed for medical or scientific research — even as it offers discounts to those who use them for just that. But the devices are cheap, discreet, and easy to use, and Gelfand can remotely track users' sleep without intruding in their lives. Which helps explain why many scientists are thinking about using them for research. The only problem? The results may not be very accurate.
That is the rub for Gelfand as she plans a large study that hopes to determine whether melatonin, a natural hormone, can ease migraine pain in pediatric patients by improving their sleep. In a small test run, she first wanted to check if study participants would wear a sleep-monitoring wristband 24/7, so she outfitted 10 people with Fitbit Flexes. But when Gelfand embarks on that bigger study, she likely won't use Fitbits because she worries about the reliability of the data they generate. Indeed, some third-party studies have shown them to be inaccurate to varying degrees.
Consumer activity trackers like Fitbits are growing in popularity among universities, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies that want to study certain health conditions in daily-life scenarios. "With remote trials, we have the potential to allow populations of patients who haven't been able to participate in research before to participate," Gelfand, a pediatric neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco, told BuzzFeed News.
But it may be some time before the devices are fully embraced by scientists, a few of whom question the reliability and replicability of the data Fitbits generate. "I have a heebie-jeebie factor about somebody using them in their science," said Hawley Montgomery-Downs, an associate professor of psychology at West Virginia University, whose studies have found inaccuracies in Fitbit's sleep-tracking abilities. "They don't vary by a couple minutes or a couple percentage points. They vary — and as a scientist, I don't use this word lightly — very dramatically."
Montgomery-Downs recently started a sleep-tracking device testing company. None of her clients currently have commercially available products.
Fitbit / Via fitbit.com
Fitness trackers are just one example of a new consumer technology that could dramatically expand the scope of medical research beyond people who live near a clinical trial center. More than 75,000 people have enrolled in studies that double as iPhone apps made with Apple's ResearchKit, an open-source software framework unveiled in March. And this month, the National Institutes of Health said it may use smartphones and wearables in a larger study of how drug therapies and preventive measures can be tailored to individuals' unique health risks. "These devices could provide the ability to track health behaviors and environmental exposures much more frequently with minimal burden on participants," the agency noted.
Fitbits do make it significantly easier for people like Julia Roy, 17, to participate in studies like Gelfand's. Roy, who just graduated from a San Francisco high school, experiences migraines as many as 11 days a month. Without dropping by Gelfand's clinic, she can participate in the study simply by taking the pills given her (either melatonin or a placebo), reporting headaches every day on an iPhone app, and wearing the Fitbit Flex around the clock. "I had to wear it on prom night," she said. "So it got my three and a half hours of sleep."
For researchers, wearable, connected devices like the Fitbit have clear advantages over more traditional electronic trackers. "Five to 10 years ago, the only thing around were pedometers. In order to get the information off pedometers, you had to bring in your pedometer, and I'd write it down or log it on a computer, or they had to write it down," said Dr. Mitesh Patel, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, who has studied how wearables and smartphones can monitor fitness. "One of the biggest benefits of these new, connected devices is we can passively pull data via cellular or Wi-Fi connections. We can do that passively to observe how people are behaving in their everyday lives."
Another benefit is cost. Actigraphs, medical-grade sleep-tracking devices, can strain budgets at prices that range between $300 and $1,000, and don't always include associated software. In contrast, a sleep-tracking Fitbit starts at $100 — software included.
Cost and convenience are a large reason why consumer trackers are catching on among researchers. The pharmaceutical giant Biogen is using Fitbits to track mobility in multiple sclerosis patients. Medidata, a cloud-computing platform for clinical research, is using Fitbit Flex and Garmin's Vivofit for similar reasons. And Misfit Wearables told BuzzFeed News that there are now about a dozen health research studies in which its trackers are used to monitor participants' activity levels.
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