ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Digit. Health
Sec. Human Factors and Digital Health
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fdgth.2025.1662255
This article is part of the Research TopicDesigning for Engagement in Digital Health for Chronic and Long-Term CareView all 14 articles
Wearable Technology in the Management of Complex Chronic Illness: Preliminary Survey Results on Self-Reported Outcomes
Provisionally accepted
- 1Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, United States
- 2Visible Health, Delaware, United States
- 3Polybio, Medford, Massachusetts, United States
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Chronic illnesses like Long Covid and Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome involve fluctuating symptoms, often worsened by exertion. Home monitoring technologies may support symptom tracking and self-management. A survey of 1,301 users of the Visible mobile application found that 77% experienced symptom improvements, 85% felt more in control, and 94% gained better understanding of their energy budget. Home-monitoring-based mobile applications may offer value in managing energy-limiting chronic conditions to achieve better self-management. While these findings suggest potential value of home-monitoring-based mobile applications for managing energy-limiting chronic conditions, they should be interpreted as descriptive and hypothesis-generating, and do not represent clinically significant effects. Randomized controlled trials are needed to formally evaluate efficacy, and future studies should include a comparison group to differentiate intervention effects from improvements gained through lived experience.
Keywords: Long Covid, myalgic encephalitis, home monitoring, ME/CFS, Survey
Received: 08 Jul 2025; Accepted: 17 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Sawyer, Preston, Leeming, Martin-Fuller, Proal and Putrino. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Abbey Sawyer, abbey.sawyer@mountsinai.org
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