Consumer wearable devices for sleep measurement: ready for use in sleep research and medicine?

We assess the current suitability of commercially available consumer wearable devices for sleep research and medicine (both from an observational and diagnostic perspective). Currently, the use of consumer wearable devices presents significant challenges for routine sleep research, with the exception of population-level studies, due to problems accessing raw data and with privacy, validity and transparency, Clinically, wearable devices may be useful for evaluating habitual patient sleep, especially when these data have been collected over multiple weeks or months. However, consumer wearable devices are currently unsuitable for diagnostic purposes in sleep medicine, due to a lack of validation in sleep disordered populations, but have the potential for large-scale diagnostic screening with appropriate validation.