Cancer Center Researchers Seek to Harness Wearable Devices to Tailor Medical Treatments
A team of UVA Health researchers has demonstrated the potential of wearable and mobile devices such as smartwatches and smartphones to help doctors tailor treatments to the needs of individual patients. The scientists found that they could use wearable devices to predict patients’ levels of cortisol, the insomnia and stress hormone. Results from their laboratory experiments suggest that patients with pancreatic cancer who have high cortisol levels from disrupted sleep will experience faster growth of their tumors; that suggests that doctors could leverage this information from patients’ mobile devices to help at- risk patients keep their cortisol levels down and, in turn, slow their tumor growth. While the work is still in the early stages, the UVA scientists say their efforts demonstrate the tremendous potential of “mobile sensing” for improving and individualizing cancer care.
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