This archive report was first published on 7 June 2020.
Wearables as Early Warning Systems for Coronavirus ¶
As the world continues to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers are turning to wearable devices like Fitbit and Apple Watch to detect infections before symptoms appear.
According to a study published in January in the British journal The Lancet, Scripps Research Institute has enrolled over 30,000 people in a study aiming to use wearables to find 'presymptomatic' and asymptomatic people with COVID-19.
Researchers at the West Virginia University Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute have also created a digital platform that can detect COVID-19 symptoms up to three days before they show up using the Oura ring, a wearable fitness and activity tracker.
Early indications suggest that wearables 'have the potential to identify people who are presymptomatic but still infectious,' said Jennifer Radin, a Scripps epidemiologist leading the research.
Wearables can provide data on body temperature, heart and respiratory rates, sleep and activity patterns, and other indicators that can be used as diagnostic tools.
Researchers from Stanford University announced plans in April to participate in research on wearables, in collaboration with Scripps, for COVID-19 and other diseases.
According to Michael Snyder, chair of genetics at Stanford School of Medicine, smartwatches and other wearables make many measurements per day, which makes them powerful monitoring devices.
