EVALUATING THE TRANSLATIONAL READINESS OF CONSUMER WEARABLES IN PARKINSON’S DISEASE: FROM MEASUREMENT TO CLINICAL UTILITY

Abstract

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is characterized by substantial temporal variability in motor and non-motor manifestations, whereas conventional clinical assessments provide only intermittent observations of disease status. Consumer wearable devices offer an opportunity to capture longitudinal physiological and behavioral information in patients’ everyday environments. However, measuring a physiological signal does not necessarily establish clinical validity or utility. Consumer wearables can capture movement characteristics, tremor, gait, physical activity, sleep-related measures, and cardiovascular signals, but the evidence remains heterogeneous. Technical feasibility and associations with clinical assessments substantially outnumber studies demonstrating improved clinical decision-making or patient outcomes. Major barriers include device heterogeneity, proprietary algorithms, inconsistent outcome definitions, limited reference values, laboratory-to-real-world performance gaps, adherence challenges, and difficulties integrating continuous data into clinical workflows. Consumer wearables therefore currently have stronger evidence as complementary monitoring tools than as independent systems for clinical decision-making. Their future clinical role will depend on reproducible digital biomarkers, clinically meaningful reference values, real-world validity, prospective evidence of clinical utility, and sustainable implementation. A five-stage translational framework, measurement capability, clinical validity, clinical interpretability, clinical utility, and implementation readiness, is used to distinguish technological promise from demonstrated clinical value.