Does Sleep Affect Pulmonary Rehab Participation?
Question: We see a lot of patients who have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and some of them attest to struggling with pulmonary rehabilitation (PR). Could wearable devices provide data to help ensure our patients receive the care they need? West Virginia Subscriber Answer: Yes, wearable devices could provide the data you need as clinicians to offer the best care for your patients. In fact, researchers at the Mayo Clinic recently released their findings of a proof-of-concept study where the researchers analyzed sleep data from wearable devices to predict the patients’ participation in remote PR activities. In the study, published in the upcoming June 2026 issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings: Digital Health, researchers used sleep data collected by wrist-worn activity monitors with machine learning (ML) models to assess how patients with COPD would engage in “home-based pulmonary rehabilitation (HBPR)” over 12 weeks. The patients’ sleep measures were collected one week before starting HBPR and the data was validated to generate a Composite Sleep Health Score. Researchers defined engagement as a participant completing one or more PR activities per week over the 12-week period. After the 12 weeks of HBPR, the Mayo Clinic researchers found that the Composite Sleep Health Scores “significantly improved the prediction” of engagement “only in support vector machine models.” Researchers determined that the study supports further investigation into tracking sleep measures with wearable devices to “improve screening for HBPR eligibility.” “As a scientist and engineer, I wanted to explore how wearable data could improve the dropout rates of remote pulmonary rehabilitation programs. By better understanding a patient’s day-to-day life, we can make more personalized and potentially more effective care plan recommendations,” said Stephanie Zawada, PhD, MS, Mayo Clinic research associate and first author of the study, in a press release. Mike Shaughnessy, BA, CPC, Production Editor, AAPC
