A useful tool or a new challenge? Hand-wrist-worn sleep trackers in patients with insomnia

Abstract

Consumer sleep wearables are increasingly popular, even among patients with sleep problems. However, the daily feedback provided by these devices could exacerbate sleep-related worry. To investigate this issue, 14 patients received a self-help guide booklet to improve sleep and wore the sleep tracker Fitbit Inspire 2 on their non-dominant hand for 4 weeks, while a control group of 12 patients only kept a handwritten sleep diary. All patients completed questionnaires at a primary care centre's first and final visit to assess general anxiety, sleep quality, sleep reactivity to stress, and quality of life. Our analysis showed that sleep quality, sleep reactivity to stress, and quality of life improved significantly for all patients between the first and final visit (p < 0.05). However, there were no significant differences between the Fitbit and control groups. Using sleep diary-derived estimates from the first and last week, we found that the control group but not the Fitbit group, increased their average time asleep each night and sleep efficiency (p < 0.05). However, these differences were primarily driven by baseline differences between the two groups. Our findings suggest that using wearables does not necessarily exacerbate sleep worries among people with insomnia.

Keywords: anxiety; insomnia; orthosomnia; patients; sleep; sleep-wearable technology.