National trends in the use of wearables for health management and sharing of data with clinicians in the United States, 2020-2024

Abstract Background There is an increasing recognition of the valuable cardiovascular (CV) health information available on wearable devices and their role in both the prevention and longitudinal management of CV health. Examining the potential population health impact of these devices requires their broad and equitable use, frequent utilization, and sharing this information with clinicians. Purpose In a probabilistic national survey of US adults, to define temporal trends and population patterns of both ownership and daily use of wearable devices for health management, as well as the prevalence of data sharing with clinicians. We examine patterns in the overall population and those with high cardiovascular risk. Methods We used data from the national, cross-sectional survey study, HINTS, which assesses health technology use using a validated instrument deployed in a multistage, probability sample of US adults. We performed a survey-weighted analysis within 3 consecutive HINTS survey cycles spanning 2020 through 2024, examining reported (i) wearable device use for health management, (ii) their daily utilization, and (iii) willingness and current sharing of wearable data with clinicians. We assessed these patterns for the national US adult population and those with high CV risk (established disease or CV risk factors), and sociodemographic subgroups. We examined differences across years using the Rao-Scott chi-square test, and relative changes in weighted estimates across subgroups. Results There were 3865, 6252, and 7278 HINTS participants in the 3 years, representing an average of 262M US adults annually during this period (mean age, 44.9 years; 51.2% women). On average, there was a 36.1% increase in the use of wearable devices among US adults, from an estimated 30.2% (or 79 million) in 2020 to 41.1% (or 108 million) in 2024, with similar patterns among those with high CV risk (P