Clinical Applications of Mobile Health Wearable–Based Sleep Monitoring: Systematic Review

Abstract

Background

Sleep disorders are a major public health issue. Nearly 1 in 2 people experience sleep disturbances during their lifetime, with a potential harmful impact on well-being and physical and mental health.

Objective

The aim of this study was to better understand the clinical applications of wearable-based sleep monitoring; therefore, we conducted a review of the literature, including feasibility studies and clinical trials on this topic.

Methods

We searched PubMed, PsycINFO, ScienceDirect, the Cochrane Library, Scopus, and the Web of Science through June 2019. We created the list of keywords based on 2 domains: wearables and sleep. The primary selection criterion was the reporting of clinical trials using wearable devices for sleep recording in adults.

Results

The initial search identified 645 articles; 19 articles meeting the inclusion criteria were included in the final analysis. In all, 4 categories of the selected articles appeared. Of the 19 studies in this review, 58 % (11/19) were comparison studies with the gold standard, 21% (4/19) were feasibility studies, 15% (3/19) were population comparison studies, and 5% (1/19) assessed the impact of sleep disorders in the clinic. The samples were heterogeneous in size, ranging from 1 to 15,839 patients. Our review shows that mobile-health (mHealth) wearable–based sleep monitoring is feasible. However, we identified some major limitations to the reliability of wearable-based monitoring methods compared with polysomnography.

Conclusions

This review showed that wearables provide acceptable sleep monitoring but with poor reliability. However, wearable mHealth devices appear to be promising tools for ecological monitoring.