Ask Jerry: Are wearables ready to be medical devices yet?

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I’m Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

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Are wearable devices accurate enough to help my Doctor?

Rhea asks:

Are wearables like watches and smart rings ready to be health devices yet? They can track information I need but if they aren’t accurate are they helping or hurting? I know you’ve talked about this in the past but have a few years made a big difference?

Thanks!

Hi Rhea, and thanks for sending in a great question. It’s also an important one, especially for people with health concerns or fitness fanatics: Are wearable devices accurate enough in 2025?

The easy answer is no. But that’s not the right answer. Accuracy is important, but it’s not the only data that can be insightful for your health, and wearables do a pretty good job at it, even if they aren’t giving the perfect readings.

To be clear, I’m talking about the things a wearable tracks on its own, like heart rate, breathing, sleep patterns, or (coming soon?) blood glucose. The things you have to enter yourself, like how many glasses of water you drank, are only as helpful as you make them. Cheating and saying you drank eight glasses of water instead of six is kind of silly.

It’s true that wearables don’t give perfect readings. They’re built using fairly cheap off-the-shelf sensors and calibrated to work for (almost) everyone, not to work perfectly until it’s recalibration time. Nobody would buy a smartwatch that needed to go back every 90 days to be tested and ended up costing a couple of thousand dollars to be slightly more precise.

But they don’t need to be exact to be helpful. NEVER depend on a wearable device to make any sort of diagnosis or determine if you have an emergency in the works. The companies making them will tell you the same — if your watch says you’re heart seems fine but you don’t feel fine, go to the emergency room. The opposite is true, too — if the watch says there is a problem, but you don’t feel like there’s a problem, get looked at anyway.

It sounds like I’m saying you shouldn’t trust what you see from your watch, and that makes them seem unhelpful. That’s half-right; don’t fully trust what it tells you, but they can be very helpful because they have one thing going for them: consistency.

I’ve tested a smartwatch against actual medical equipment, and the results were different, even to the point that the watch didn’t see a real problem. What I’ve found is that while the readings may not be fully accurate, they are great at showing trends

If your watch indicates that your heart rate is 20 bpm different from an actual monitor, but shows a 20 bpm difference each time your heart rate rises or drops, you will see a consistent trend. And so will your doctor.

I’ve even asked my doctor about this because I am a nerd. She told me that you can’t get real-time clinical data from a watch or a ring, no matter the brand. However, you can review your history, and important information is readily available to help her. You aren’t in her office hooked up to an EKG 24 hours a day, but you wear your watch whenever it’s not charging. Those readings tell a story. That’s why she wears one!

I believe wearables play a crucial role in healthcare, particularly for individuals who require additional support in this area. But don’t let your Pixel Watch or Galaxy Ring decide if and when you should go to the ER.

Provide your doctor access to your wearable’s health history and give them another tool to keep you healthy.