Published January 11, 2021
Gizmodo quotes Albert Titus, professor and chair of biomedical engineering, in a story asking experts to explain whether wearable technologies accurately track calorie-burn.
"Wearables are not at a level of sophistication that allow them to be used for critical measurements, such as precisely monitoring energy expenditure for medical reasons or for significant athletic training purposes," Titus said. "If someone is interested in a general gauge of their calorie burn for trends over time or for daily comparisons, then a wearable is an acceptable tool. And one should not overlook wearables as motivators to getting people moving. However, one should not rely on exact numbers reported. We expect wearable devices to get better, and indeed, newer versions of wearables allow you to input even more types of activities in an attempt to improve the accuracy of the built-in algorithms."
