Using Fitness Trackers in Clinical Research: What Nurse Practitioners Need to Know

Consumer-based wearable fitness trackers present a new array of opportunities and challenges to nurse practitioners engaged in health promotion research. Key advantages include the ability to provide continuous, objective, remote monitoring of physical activity and the potential to improve the efficacy of physical activity interventions. This paper provides an overview of fitness trackers, including their functions and accuracy, and addresses the following key issues to consider before using trackers in research: (1) when to use a fitness tracker; (2) choosing a brand and model; (3) encouraging good compliance; and (4) extracting and using the data.