Dr Seemab Shaikh, Ali Rizvi, Dr Salil Bendre and Gaurav Parchani

According to a report on the John Hopkins Medicine website, trackers often factor in environmental indices like room temperature, lifestyle indices like when you ate your meal, and SpO2 or oxygen saturation. A spokesperson from Fitbit, another market player, noted, “Our activity trackers and smartwatches enable users to track their sleep stages through a combination of machine learning, accelerometer data, and heart rate variability.” Manufacturers including Fitbit and Dozee also offer a sleep score, “reflecting the quality of sleep,” the spokes-person asserted.

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Patients are getting hooked to these devices and the data they provide, claim doctors. “Patients often come to me on the basis of the data on the tracker. They get obsessed with improving just that data or score; they aren’t concerned with the right indices for treatment,” points out Pune-based ENT surgeon and sleep specialist Dr Seemab Shaikh, founder national president of the Indian Association of Surgeons for Sleep Apnea. Citing the example of Obstructive Sleep Apnea, he elaborates, “In this case, it’s your breathing pattern at night which disturbs your sleep. For the device to detect this problem, it needs to be connected to your airway at night [and regular trackers aren’t]. So, they provide limited information; if you have neurological or any psychological concerns, that won’t reflect either.” 

Dr Salil S Bendre, consultant, pulmonology, and sleep medicine specialist, Nanavati Super Speciality Hospital, says trackers are screening devices. “They aren’t investigations that can confirm disorders, so we can’t plan treatment based on their data. If you experience fragmented sleep, go to a sleep specialist who will diagnose if you need a sleep study.”