Health Wearables: What Your Data Can – and Can’t – Tell You

Health wearables can provide valuable insights into sleep, heart rate, steps, and blood oxygen levels – but how many of us bring that data to our healthcare appointments? What can these numbers tell us about our baseline and important changes in our health? We spoke with Calum MacRae, MD, PhD, a cardiologist at Mass General Brigham, about how to use wearable data to better understand your body, identify patterns, and potentially spot changes before a health crisis. We discussed why wearables are more than vanity metrics or tools for tracking activity, and how they can help us pay attention to the factors influencing our health. But context matters: Wearables are a tool, not a replacement for medical care or treatment.

Credits

Host: Neha Pathak, MD, FACP, DipABLM Producer/Editor: Lauren Summers Guest: Calum MacRae, MD, PhD See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.