Returning Individualized Wearable Sensor Results to Older Adult Research Participants: A Pilot Study

Wearable sensors that monitor physical behaviors are increasingly adopted in clinical research. Older adult research participants have expressed interest in tracking and receiving feedback on their physical behaviors. Simultaneously, researchers and clinical trial sponsors are interested in returning results to participants, but the question of how to return individual study results derived from research-grade wearable sensors remains unanswered. In this study, we (1) assessed the feasibility of returning individual physical behavior results to older adult research participants and (2) obtained participant feedback on the returned results.

Older adult participants (N = 20; ages 67-96) underwent 14 days of remote monitoring with 2 wearable sensors. We then used a semiautomated process to generate a 1-page report summarizing each participant's physical behaviors across the 14 days. This report was delivered to each participant via email, and they were asked to evaluate the report.

Participants found the reports easy to understand, health-relevant, interesting, and visually pleasing. They had valuable suggestions to improve data interpretability and raised concerns such as comparisons with measures derived from their consumer-grade sensors.

We have demonstrated the feasibility of returning individual physical behavior results from research-grade devices to older research participants, and our results indicate that this practice is well-received. Further research to develop more efficient and scalable systems to return results to participants, and to understand the preferences of participants in larger, more representative samples, is warranted.