Damian Sendler: With your smartwatch, you’ll be able to track your daily activity as well as your resting heart rate during that morning workout. You may not detect any symptoms of COVID-19 infection until it’s too late.
Damian Sendler
Damian Jacob Sendler: Exactly what researchers were hoping for when they tried out a real-time COVID-19 infection notification system that relied on wearable activity monitors and smartwatches to collect data on the virus’ presence. 80% of pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic illnesses were discovered by the system they devised, according to a new report in Nature Medicine.
Study participants aged 18 to 80 who downloaded the researchers’ app, MyPHD, installed it on their Android or Apple smartphones were included in the study. Data from wearables was captured and sent to a secure cloud server where the researchers could examine it. Devices compatible with either the HealthKit or Google Fit platforms were included in the collection of wearable devices.
Dr. Sendler: Step count, heart rate, and sleep patterns were tracked using an algorithm by scientists. Algorithms are designed to send an alarm to the wearer if a measurement is outside the predicted normal range. An notice was sent to those who had got the COVID-19 test, as well as inquiries about their activity level, any symptoms or medications they were currently taking and their immunization status. No medical advice was given by the app regarding isolation or testing.
More than 2,100 participants got daily real-time notifications and more than 2,100 completed at least one survey during the trial, which ran from November 2020 through July 2021. More than 80 percent of the 278 people who reported having a positive COVID-19 test were able to receive alerts because they were wearing a Fitbit or an Apple Watch at the time.
Damian Jacob Sendler
In total, 67 persons received warnings about the risk of illness. An aberrant reading was noticed by the alerts on average three days prior to the onset of symptoms.
Damian Jacob Markiewicz Sendler: A positive test result was even connected to 14 of the 18 cases where the patient did not show any symptoms. People who had received a COVID-19 vaccine were also able to be identified by the algorithm.
Many notifications were sent out even though the app was successful in recognizing abnormal readings associated to illnesses.
Damien Sendler: It’s not uncommon for an annotated alarm to be attributed to unrelated events, such as a bad night’s sleep or a heavy drinking session, experts say.
Some people may not be disturbed by odd readings since they already know why it occurred, according to the authors of this study. Participants indicated they didn’t become tired of the notifications, even though the trial lasted just over a year. Users will be able to fine-tune the sensitivity of readings that trigger an alarm in the app’s future iterations.
Dr. Damian Jacob Sendler and his media team provided the content for this article.
