The Case for Using Actigraphy Generated Sleep and Activity Endpoints in Alzheimer’s Disease Clinical Trials

Abstract

More and more people in the industrialised world use wearables and smartphones to monitor their health and fitness. These devices are often used in combination with special apps to monitor and document daily activities and sleep. It would appear to be a logical step to assess the relevance of these devices in drug development trials. In contrast to the consumer devices, the technology used in clinical trials needs to be validated and compliant with the relevant regulations. Even under these complex requirements, wearables offer a number of new opportunities to objectively capture clinically relevant outcome measures –potentially with lower burden for patients and site staff. As an example, we describe the use in Alzheimer’s disease drug development studies. This is an indication where there have been a number of failures, in part due to the difficulties this patient population has in reliably completing existing tools. In addition rater scales add complexity due to inter- and intra-rater variability.