Cedars-Sinai Hospital to Use FitBit to Measure Patient Mobility

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (Los Angeles, CA, USA) is conducting a study to see if using an activity bracelet could help assess if oncologic patients are active enough for chemotherapy.

The short, two-week trial will enroll 30 patients in advanced stages of cancer who are ambulatory, over 18, and have access to an internet-connected smartphone. The trial will mainly be a feasibility study, seeing how effective a Fitbit (San Francisco, CA, USA) activity bracelet, as well as questionnaires, are at monitoring the target population. All 30 patients will be given Fitbit Charge HR device and will be asked to wear it at all times, other than in the bath and other times the tracker would be submerged.


The patients will also fill out questionnaires at two oncologist visits during the trial period, and again at a six month follow-up. Researchers will also review mortality and hospitalization for the subjects, as well as whether they wore the device as directed. They will also examine whether the combination of the Fitbit device and the patient-reported-outcome questionnaires can help physicians screen patients for subjective measures such as fatigue, distress, pain, and trouble sleeping, which patients can tend to under-report.

“What we know is that individuals who are up and about tend to be more able to tolerate chemotherapy and have a greater potential for benefitting from it,” said lead investigator Arvind Shinde, MD, of the departments of supportive care medicine, hematology, and oncology. “People who are spending more time in bed usually get harmed by the treatment we give, even if the cancer is responsive to the treatment.”

“A 30-patient study is not enough to give us all the data we need; the two-week trial is something of a dry run to get the kinks of data collection ironed out. The next step will be to do a larger study across multiple tumor types and follow people longitudinally for a much longer period of time,” added Dr. Shinde. “We can see how they do as they progress through their treatments, follow their ups and downs. We’ll be able to get changes over baseline and create a better algorithm for this assessment.”

The Fitbit Charge HR is an activity wrist band that offers continuous heart rate monitoring for better estimation of daily activity, tracking workouts, and monitoring resting heart rate and sleep quality. The advanced tracking records daily steps and calories by day and sleep by night, switching between modes based on movement and heart rate data. The device is linked by an app to a smartphone, allowing real time monitoring of daily data. The Charge HR is available in a range of colors, including black, plum, blue, teal, and tangerine.

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