Using wearable and nearable devices in telerehabilitation for COPD: a scoping review of digital endpoints in home-based programs

TL;DR

This review explores how wearable devices can track COPD patients' home-based rehabilitation, identifying common digital endpoints and highlighting the need for standardized methods.

Contribution

The study provides the first scoping review of digital endpoints in home-based COPD rehabilitation using wearable devices.

Findings

Step count was the most frequently used digital endpoint in home-based COPD rehabilitation studies.

Activity trackers were the most common devices used to collect data in these studies.

Study designs and methods were highly variable, limiting the ability to synthesize results.

Abstract

Despite its demonstrated effectiveness at improving outcomes, pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is underutilized. Sensor-generated data from wearable devices have the potential to mitigate this challenge by generating digital endpoints that provide insights into patient behaviors at home; however, there is no consensus on how to measure home-based PR (HBPR) outcomes with these tools. This review aims to describe (1) the most frequent digital endpoints used in HBPR studies and (2) the devices used to capture these endpoints, summarizing gaps in their applications to HBPR for COPD patients.

We completed a scoping review using the PRISMA checklist across databases (Web of Science, Scopus, and OVID) from January 1, 2005 to June 1, 2025. We included peer-reviewed articles on HBPR for COPD, excluding reviews, commentaries/editorials, poster abstracts, and conference proceedings. Eligible articles included cohort studies and clinical trials of adult patients (age ≥ 18 years) with COPD participating in HBPR that include one or more digital endpoints.

Among eligible articles (n = 218), 13 (6.0%) met inclusion criteria, the majority of which were published after 2020 (61.5%). Most studies enrolled fewer than 100 COPD patients (76.9%) for an average monitoring period of 12.5 weeks. Activity trackers were the most commonly used device (46.2%) to capture data. The most frequently used digital endpoints were step count (84.6%), time spent active (38.5%), and time spent sedentary (30.8%). Two study designs were used: randomized controlled trial (76.9%) and observational cohort. Study designs were heterogenous with more than one-third (38.5%) presenting a lack of statistically significant results.

Although we identified analogous digital endpoints in some studies, dissimilar methods and study designs remain barriers to synthesizing results generated from HBPR programs for COPD. Wearable devices have the potential to build novel PR models, but more work is needed to translate real-world data into clinically meaningful measures. Future research should elucidate which participants would benefit most from and complete HBPR to build an evidence base for the validation of HBPR-relevant digital endpoints, particularly those derived from less common sources like cardiovascular and sleep measures.

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