From Data to Better Care: Consumer Wearables for Sleep and Circadian Rhythm Monitoring in Nursing Homes

TL;DR

This paper explores how consumer wearables can track sleep and circadian rhythms in nursing home residents, offering new ways to improve health and well-being.

Contribution

It reviews the current state of wearable technology for sleep monitoring in nursing homes and highlights opportunities and challenges for implementation.

Findings

Consumer wearables offer evolving capabilities for sleep and circadian rhythm tracking.

Opportunities exist to integrate these technologies into nursing home research and practice.

Challenges include accuracy, cost, and data access in real-world settings.

Abstract

The expanding availability of consumer-grade sleep tracking devices, like smartwatches, fitness bands, and smart rings, has been driven by advancements in wearable technology, miniaturized sensors, and artificial intelligence-driven analytics. This presentation reviews the state of the science for application of wearable technology to measure and monitor sleep and circadian rhythms in nursing home residents and describes how technologies have evolved over time. Key characteristics, including sensors, feedback to consumers, cloud service, raw data access, accuracy, cost, and capability will be discussed in light of the inherent opportunities and challenges for implementation of this technology in both nursing home research and practice. As these technologies become more sophisticated and widely available, they present new possibilities for integrating sleep and circadian rhythm tracking into both research and practice and may significantly improve residents’ health and well-being.