Researchers from Reykjavik University and the Technical University of Denmark recently published new insights on the importance of getting enough sleep and daily activity data to provide a representative summary of daily activity and sleep patterns. They found out that seasonal patterns and daylight saving time clock change are important aspects that need to be taken into consideration when choosing a period for collecting data and designing studies on sleep. 

They highlight the benefits of consumer-grade self-tracking technologies. This includes wearable technologies such as smart watches, as well as nearable technologies such as connected mattresses. The portability and affordability of these technologies opens up new opportunities for pursuing clinical research and for rethinking the implementation of remote monitoring care models. In their research, exploratory data analysis and unsupervised machine learning is used to investigate the consistency of various physical activities and sleep metrics over different time spans.

“We showed specifically that to obtain more robust individual assessments of sleep and physical activity patterns through self-trackers, an evaluation period of >3 to 14 days is necessary.”

The paper is published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research. You can read the full paper here.