2025 · Expert review of medical devices · paywalled
Wearable technology in inflammatory bowel disease: current state and future direction
Harindranath & Desai
The finding, in our words
The review summarised studies where wearable sensors monitored inflammatory bowel disease and predicted flares in patients. Future developments in ingestible biosensors and microbiome tracking could enable earlier detection and more tailored treatment in decentralised care.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
A direct-to-participant, multichannel recruitment strategy enrolled 34,244 older adults into a virtual trial testing an Apple Watch based heart health programme with electrocardiogram and irregular rhythm notification features, achieving broad geographic and gender diversity but under-representing non-White ethnic groups.
Analysis of six studies revealed that decentralised clinical trial elements enhanced data completeness by enabling direct access to medical records, although this introduced a significant burden for data abstraction. The results suggest that decentralised approaches are not a universal solution but provide specific metrics that can help design fit-for-purpose trials.
Wearable-derived digital biomarkers have been accepted by regulatory agencies as endpoints in clinical trials for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, showing their potential to support decentralised diagnostics through patient-centric monitoring. This matters because it enables more sensitive and continuous assessment of disease progression outside clinical settings.
Ma et al., Neurology and therapy (paywalled) · source ↗
A 2025 review from China finds decentralised trials still far from standard practice despite the enthusiasm of regulators and industry, and names the operational gaps that keep them so: technology, oversight and data quality.
This study found that a decentralised approach using home-based sleep apnoea screening, heart rhythm monitoring and activity tracking in patients with atrial fibrillation is feasible, with high data completeness and low drop-out rates. The results support the use of patient-centric digital tools in decentralised trials for chronic cardiac conditions.
Hashiba et al., Danish medical journal (paywalled) · source ↗