The growing complexity of clinical trials and the difficulty of keeping patients enrolled are two of the leading challenges facing sites today. Protocols are becoming more adaptive and data-intensive, but most tools don’t support timely updates. At the same time, frequent site visits and reporting demands drive patients to drop out. Researchers are turning to remote patient monitoring (RPM) technologies to reduce these challenges.
As wearable devices continuously capture vital signs outside of the clinic, they provide an earlier and more comprehensive picture of the patient’s physiological condition. That visibility helps researchers reach endpoints faster and eases the demands on participants.
Researchers in many fields are already demonstrating the impact of wearable technology. Cardiac teams are detecting episodes of atrial fibrillation (AFib) that standard monitoring often misses. Maternal health researchers are tracking arrhythmias in high-risk pregnancies, a group where reliable data has been scarce. Public health teams are measuring how exposure to urban green space affects stress and cardiac function.
Together, these studies show how remote patient monitoring can expand clinical research into areas that were once difficult to explore. But the true transformation is not just about convenience or data volume; it’s about unlocking entirely new classes of evidence that were previously invisible to traditional, site-based research.
Remote Patient Monitoring for Detecting AFib Outside the Hospital
AFib is the most common complication after cardiac surgery, yet its frequency has been difficult to measure with accuracy. Traditional in-hospital monitoring records episodes during a patient’s stay, but after discharge, many patients have no reliable follow-up to capture additional events.
Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital tracked more than 100 cardiac surgery patients with continuous ECG patches for up to two weeks after discharge. While 42% experienced AFib during their hospital stay, another 27% had new episodes after discharge, many lasting less than five minutes. These brief, irregular events would have been almost impossible to capture with standard follow-up methods.
Remote patient monitoring provided a more complete picture of postoperative risk. Continuous monitoring gives researchers a more accurate picture of how often AFib occurs after surgery, strengthening the case for new post-discharge monitoring guidelines. For patients, it detects brief episodes that standard follow-up could overlook, giving clinicians a chance to intervene before complications develop.
Uncovering Cardiac Stress in High-Risk Pregnancies
The BRITE-MOM study at the University of California, San Francisco, builds on prior research examining AFib and expands it into one of the most vulnerable patient groups: pregnant and postpartum women. For those with congenital heart disease or pre-eclampsia, pregnancy can heighten the risk of dangerous arrhythmias, yet researchers still have limited insight into when and how these episodes occur.
UCSF researchers are using Vivalink’s wearable ECG sensors and data platform to follow participants through pregnancy and for six months after delivery. The devices capture round-the-clock data on heart rate variability, arrhythmia episodes, and early signs of cardiac stress, which often go undetected during office exams or routine testing.
Instead of relying on occasional exams, researchers are tracking arrhythmias as they unfold over time. The data could help clinicians catch problems earlier, intervene more effectively, and plan long-term care for women at higher risk.
Measuring How Nature Impacts Mental and Physical Health
The benefits of spending time in nature are widely acknowledged, but measuring how the body responds in real-world settings has been difficult. Patient-reported surveys and clinic-based tests capture snapshots, but they miss the moment-by-moment changes in stress and cardiovascular function that occur as someone moves through their environment.
Building on earlier research from the University of Louisville that linked large-scale tree planting to improved cardiovascular health, researchers are assessing whether smaller, densely planted pockets of greenery can have similar benefits. In the Trager MicroForest Project, participants wear sensors that track heart rate variability, respiration, blood pressure, body temperature, and movement while following the same routine in two settings: a paved urban area and a newly planted microforest in downtown Louisville.
Early findings suggest the impact is measurable. Even though the study is ongoing, participants already showed lower anxiety and improved heart rate variability when spending time in the park compared to their concrete counterparts. With more than 100 trees and 240 shrubs now planted, researchers expect those benefits to deepen as the greenery grows.
Wearables are helping the researchers quantify the benefits of even small-scale green interventions. The data could inform how cities design healthier public spaces, how clinicians integrate nature exposure into treatment plans, and how health systems use environmental monitoring to address chronic stress and cardiovascular risk sooner.
From Supplementary Tool to Central Driver of Evidence
In each study, the ability to capture continuous, real-world data reduces the time between when data appears and when it can inform a study’s direction. Instead of waiting for scheduled site visits or relying on patient recall, researchers can see how health shifts in real time and under real world situations. As a result, researchers can validate endpoints more quickly, adapt protocols to keep participants engaged, and build stronger evidence with fewer gaps.
Wearables and remote patient monitoring were previously viewed as supplementary tools in exploratory research, used mainly to capture secondary data. As these studies show, wearables are now primary sources of data that drive trial outcomes. Even regulators now recognize the value of validated digital health tools, encouraging their use in later-stage trials. By uncovering arrhythmias after surgery, tracking cardiac stress in pregnancy, and quantifying the effects of green space, they’re surfacing endpoints that traditional methods could have missed.
These examples are not isolated successes; they are a preview of a new era in clinical research. The next frontier will be the intelligent fusion of these continuous data streams, combining physiological signals with environmental and behavioral data to create a truly holistic picture of patient health. As these technologies mature, they will not only continue to transform clinical trials but will ultimately erase the line between research and care, enabling a future of proactive, predictive, and truly personalized medicine.
By Jiang Li, CEO of Vivalink
