Over 70 million Americans wear digital activity trackers (DATs) to record their sleep, steps and heart rate. A new study from Scripps Research found that these devices could also provide insight into even more, including individual health risks like obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and high blood pressure.
The findings, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research on December 3, 2025, used DATs to identify an association between sleep variability—the night-to-night fluctuation of when an individual falls asleep and wakes—and their risk of developing sleep apnea and hypertension. This research joins a growing body of evidence that DATs could become more useful clinical tools to assess health risks in the near future.
“Data from digital activity trackers provides a unique way to detect meaningful health patterns from the devices that people already own,” says Stuti Jaiswal, senior author and assistant professor at Scripps Research, who is also a faculty hospitalist at Scripps Clinic. “Digital health studies have been gaining acceptance over the past decade, and we’re now demonstrating what these technologies can reveal about how sleep influences cardiovascular health.”
