In the print cover story of Orthopedics Today, HSS associate scientist Stephen Lyman, PhD, discussed the growing interest for using wearable technology as a research tool for patient-reported outcomes.

According to the article, the current standard medical practice involves using validated surveys to collect patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs). Dr. Lyman noted that PROMs surveys could be limited by patient health literacy.

"We are increasingly becoming aware that patients have cultural biases. They are not biases of the patients. It is just how people from different cultures interpret the same question, even if they speak the same language, may be different," said Dr. Lyman.

He added that once the technological challenges associated with wearables are ironed out, they could be more reliable and unbiased compared with the PROMs surveys.

"From a researcher's perspective, active tasks allow us to assign dexterity tasks for patients with hand or wrist conditions or, for example, cerebral palsy patients. That gives you a direct measurement of patient functional ability without the limitations of self-administered questionnaires and things like that where patients might not answer the question the way we expect them to," noted Dr. Lyman.

Read the full article at healio.com [registration required]. This also appeared in the July 2018 print issue.