Wearable devices for the detection of COVID-19

EN BREF ...

« Wearable devices, such as activity trackers and smartwatches, can provide unique insights into our health and well-being1,2. Unlike conventional testing in a clinical setting, which may occur a few (or less) times a year, wearables offer continuous access to real-time physiological data. This allows deviations from a person’s ‘usual’ baselines to be detected: an approach to healthcare that is fundamentally different from current practice, which predominantly compares physiological measurements to population statistics. And during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the potential of wearable health devices has become increasingly apparent3–7. To start, and writing in Nature Biomedical Engineering, Xiao Li, Michael Snyder and colleagues at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Case Western University have shown that smartwatch data — heart rate, number of daily steps and sleep time — can detect pre-symptomatic cases of COVID-198. The researchers analysed the data (collected with devices such as Fitbits and Apple watches) of 32 infected individuals, identified from a pool of over 5,000 participants, and explored correlations between different metrics in order to detect aberrant physiology. They looked, in particular, at elevated resting heart rates (relative to a previous healthy window), and increased heart rates relative to number of steps. Twenty-six of the COVID-19 positive participants produced aberrant physiological signals 4 to 7 days in advance of the onset of symptoms or diagnosis; 6 of the COVID-19 positive participants did not produce easily identifiable signals before the onset of symptoms. » En bref issu de l’étude.