Background Wearable technology has become a rapidly growing consumer market which is expected to double between 2021 and 2026. One popular use for wearables is to track health outcomes. Amid escalating mistrust towards the medical community, this study investigates how varying levels of trust in the healthcare system affect an individual’s decision to track their health with wearables, the frequency of using wearables to track their health, and sharing the data with their providers.

Methods Data from the 2022 Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS) 6 was analyzed for trust in the healthcare system, use and sharing of health information from wearable devices, and socio-demographic characteristics (age, gender, income, and race). Level of trust in the healthcare system, the main study predictor, was categorized into four levels: not a lot, a little, somewhat, and a lot. Dependent variables were 1) use of a wearable device to track healthcare information; 2) willingness to share wearable health information with a provider; and 3) frequency of tracking metrics on a wearable over the past month.

Results Among the 6,118 respondents, 84.8% reported moderate to high levels of trust in the U.S. healthcare system, and 33.2% used wearables in the past year to track their healthcare data. 70.8% of wearable users stated that they had used a wearable to track their health daily or nearly daily during the past month, and 78.1% of respondents were willing to share wearable data with a healthcare provider. Participants with a lot of trust were significantly more willing to share their wearable data with a healthcare provider (AOR:1.49;95% CI 1.27-1.73), after controlling for covariates. Increasing income levels resulted in a higher likelihood of using a wearable to track health data (AOR:1.33;95% CI 1.29-1.37) and increased frequency of tracking health metrics on wearables (AOR:1.10;95% CI 1.06-1.13). Men are also less likely to use wearables (AOR:0.62;95% CI 0.54-0.70) and track their health with them continuously (AOR:0.85;95% CI 0.74-0.97) than women.

Conclusion: This study suggests that increasing levels of trust in the healthcare system, increasing income, and being female are associated with greater adoption of wearable technology for health information tracking and sharing.