Validating Clinical Usefulness of Wearable Tech

Ultimately measurement of value.

Verifying, Validating the Clinical Usefulness of Wearable Technology
By Duke University Pratt School of Engineering
May 28, 2020

Duke University assistant professor Jessilyn Dunn (right) watches as Dunn's Ph.d. student and co-author Brinnae Bent prepares to download information from a wearable health monitoring device.
An international team of biomedical engineers and researchers has created a framework for the assessment and documentation of the clinical usefulness of wearable computing devices.

An international team of biomedical engineers and researchers has created a framework to assess and document the clinical usefulness of wearable devices.

The proposed V3 framework would first verify the utility of Biometric Monitoring technologies (BioMeTs) by having hardware manufacturers test sample-level sensor outputs.

The next step, analytical validation, involves having engineers, data scientists, and physiologists evaluate algorithms that produce physiological metrics from sensor data.

The third and final step entails clinical validation, in which a technology vendor or clinical expert demonstrates that a BioMeT can acceptably identify, quantify, or predict the clinical, biological, physical, or functional experience it was intended to record, in the target population of users.

Duke's Will Wang said, "If such information is not clinically validated, users and researchers alike will be led to unjustified conclusions."

From Duke University Pratt School of Engineering .... "  (Full text available at link)