Abstract
Background
There is an increasing recognition of the valuable cardiovascular (CV) health information available on wearable devices and their role in both the prevention and longitudinal management of CV health. Examining the potential population health impact of these devices requires their broad and equitable use, frequent utilization, and sharing this information with clinicians.
Purpose
In a probabilistic national survey of US adults, to define temporal trends and population patterns of both ownership and daily use of wearable devices for health management, as well as the prevalence of data sharing with clinicians. We examine patterns in the overall population and those with high cardiovascular risk.
Methods
We used data from the national, cross-sectional survey study, HINTS, which assesses health technology use using a validated instrument deployed in a multistage, probability sample of US adults. We performed a survey-weighted analysis within 3 consecutive HINTS survey cycles spanning 2020 through 2024, examining reported (i) wearable device use for health management, (ii) their daily utilization, and (iii) willingness and current sharing of wearable data with clinicians. We assessed these patterns for the national US adult population and those with high CV risk (established disease or CV risk factors), and sociodemographic subgroups. We examined differences across years using the Rao-Scott chi-square test, and relative changes in weighted estimates across subgroups.
Results
There were 3865, 6252, and 7278 HINTS participants in the 3 years, representing an average of 262M US adults annually during this period (mean age, 44.9 years; 51.2% women). On average, there was a 36.1% increase in the use of wearable devices among US adults, from an estimated 30.2% (or 79 million) in 2020 to 41.1% (or 108 million) in 2024, with similar patterns among those with high CV risk (P<.001 for both). The actual daily use of wearable devices was low, remaining relatively consistent across the study period (15.1% in 2020 to 18.5% in 2024) (Figure 1). While there was a high willingness to share wearable data with healthcare providers to aid care (73.4% to 81.3%), only a minority shared their data throughout study years (14.2% in 2020 vs 19.2% in 2024). There were notable differences in the changes in ownership, daily use, and data sharing across populations based on age, sex, race, and income (Figure 2).
Conclusions
Two in 5 US adults reported using wearable devices in 2024, overall and among those high CV risk, with a broad increase across socio-demographic groups. However, the low daily use of these devices and limited sharing of data with healthcare providers limit their potential role for monitoring and improving cardiovascular care.
Figure 1.
Figure 2.
