Wearable health devices, or “wearables” like Oura, Whoop, Dexcom Stelo and Apple Watches are generating more health data than ever, such as tracking sleep stages, glucose fluctuations, heart rhythms, stress levels and more. But a new study co-authored by Mary P. Harrison, assistant professor of marketing at Samford University's Brock School of Business, reveals a critical tension: our health care system is still built around episodic, reactive care, and that misalignment can have real consequences for consumers.
In the article "Empowered or Overwhelmed? Wearable Health Technologies and Consumer Well-Being in the Context of Consumer–Physician Interactions," published in the Journal of Consumer Affairs, Harrison and her co-authors ask a question that many wearable users have likely experienced firsthand: if your device repeatedly flags a sleep issue or detects unusual glucose readings, what should you do? Will your doctor even look at the data?
To explore these questions, Harrison and the research team conducted in-depth interviews with wearable device users and practicing physicians across a range of specialties. The study identifies four consumer tensions and four parallel physician tensions that emerge when continuous, device-generated data meets a health care system designed for brief clinical encounters. Consumers often feel empowered by access to their own health information, but are uncertain about how to interpret it or what actions to take. Physicians see potential value in wearable data but face real constraints integrating it into existing workflows.
Together, these perspectives point to what the authors call the “guidance infrastructure gap,” the absence of the interpretive, relational and system-level support needed to help consumers and clinicians make sense of continuous health data. The data is there; the structures that help people act on it are still catching up.
At Brock School of Business, Harrison’s research reflects a commitment to understanding how marketplace forces shape human flourishing. Her work is a call to close the guidance infrastructure gap through better clinical workflows, coordinated policy and care models designed for the continuous data age.
