Consumers' perceived attitudes to wearable devices in health monitoring in China: A survey study.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Capital market and consumer market interest in wearable devices has surged in recent years, however, their actual acceptance in the field of health monitoring is somewhat not as expected. This study aims to understand the perceptions of wearable devices of general consumers, analyze the review of the devices by users, and find existing problems associated with current wearable devices.

METHODS: Sojump.com, an on-line questionnaire tool, was used to generate the questionnaire, which focused on four aspects. The snowball sampling method was employed to collect questionnaires by making use of the author's social network.

RESULTS: (1) A total of 2058 valid questionnaires were received from the respondents from every province in China; of the respondents, 52.4% have used a wearable device. (2) The respondents had a low level of knowledge about wearable devices (2.79/5) but were optimistic with regard to the devices' future (3.86/5), and 84% recognized an acceptable price of less than 2000 RMB. Nearly half of the respondents were unwilling to continuously wear the device (47.1%) and share their health data (44.7%). (3) The functions of wearable devices that the respondents expected were mainly health management (63.5%), mobile phone accessories (61.9%), and location tracking (61.2%), and the promising hot future functions were mainly data analysis (74.2%), exercise coaching (60.5%), and child tracking (58.8%). Regarding the health monitoring functions, the respondents were most interested in heart health monitoring. (4) The respondents had different levels of emphasis regarding the existing problems of wearable devices at different use stages. Being easily damaged or lost (49.7%), being incapable of providing health recommendations based on data analysis (46.7%), and being uncomfortable to wear (45.8%) likely lead consumers to abandon the use of wearable devices.

CONCLUSIONS: Consumers are optimistic about the prospects of wearable devices; however, there is a large gap between the reliability of the measurement data, the ease of use, and the interpretation of measurement data of current wearable products and consumer expectations. Consumer demand for health management functions is higher than that for daily auxiliary-type functions, which is an issue that should be properly addressed and resolved by manufacturers.