Brief Abstract:

To better understand the level of frailty of community-dwelling older adults, previous research studies used medical-grade smart activity trackers to continuously monitor physical activities and sleep quality. These studies provide evidence for the internal construct validity of medical-grade smart activity trackers for screening frailty and strong associations between varying sleep quality parameters and frailty. Consumer-level smart activity trackers are a promising tool to continuously monitor physical activity level and sleep quality of community-dwelling older adults. The accumulated evidence for medical-grade smart activity trackers as a frailty monitoring tool; consumer-grade smart activity trackers as a valid and acceptable tool to measure physical, sleep quality, and heart rate parameters; and increasing adoption of these smart wearables by older adults highlight the opportunity to continuously monitor frailty within the community. Investigating the feasibility of consumer-grade smart activity trackers for screening and monitoring frailty for community-dwelling older adults has potential to close the clinical gap for primary care physicians by guiding towards appropriate preventive and interventional practices for frailty.