Stephen O'Rourke, clinical specialist in musculoskeletal physiotherapist said smart watches cannot replace human judgement.

Smart watches are something that many of us are wearing, but are they a good tool for health and can they really replace human judgement? 

Stephen O'Rourke, clinical specialist in musculoskeletal physiotherapist at the Mater University Hospital Dublin said smart watches cannot replace human judgement.

Stephen O'Rourke, said he used to get frustrated when he didn’t reach certain sleep goals. 

“Listen to your body, not your watch. Really ask yourself if you’re ready to exercise and if you feel rested", he told The Hard Shoulder on Saturday. 

“Smart watches are great for accountability. They're really brilliant for giving you feedback loops around your health stats and helping you set goals. 

“You don’t want to be thinking of them as a coach or a physio or even as a replacement for common sense. Use them as a guide but at your own judgement.”

Can smart watches replace human judgement?

Dr O'Rourke explained that while smart watches are used daily, they are not perfect in terms of their accuracy. 

People can now pay cash-free with smartwatches or phones. Picture by: Pexels.

“We’ve seen huge strides in wearability being used in clinical populations. Even people with diabetes can get real time glucose levels to their phone which has huge health implications on their ability to better manage their glucose levels”, he explained. 

He did note however that such reliance on smart watches for health could lead to an unhealthy obsession of focusing on gamified targets instead of our own bodies. 

“There's been lots of examination of the accuracy of them and how they actually overestimated or underestimate things like our steps as we've spoken about but also our calories which can have huge implications”, he told The Hard Shoulder. 

He explained that similar approximative measurements occurred when measuring sleep. 

“When you look at a kind of clinically measuring sleep it's actually done by measuring brainwaves in a clinical setting. 

“What the wearables do is look at movement, breathing patterns and your heart rate which gives you an estimate on how much you slept that is not perfect. 

“This kind of orthosomnia is that kind of obsessive checking of your sleep data, which then becomes a fixation.”

Main Image: Smart watches.