Smartphone Application-Based Vital Sign Monitors

Health-related applications for smartphones represent a new and popular market for consumer oriented products. These applications are generally not considered medical devices and, as such, are not under the purview of the Federal Drug Administration. Some of these applications purport to measure vital signs, but do not have any published data to confirm accuracy of such measurements and their developers have not been willing to divulge the methods by which vital sign readings are produced. Use of unvalidated application derived data may contribute to patient harm as patients may make healthcare decisions based on the results these applications provide. This study aims to assess the accuracy of several such applications by comparing their findings to those of clinical vital sign monitors commonly used in the perioperative setting.