The hopes and hazards of using personal health technologies in the diagnosis and prognosis of infections

EN BREF ...

"Work from numerous groups has shown the potential of using data from wearable devices to characterise each individual’s unique baseline, identify deviations from that baseline suggestive of a viral infection, and to aggregate that data to better inform population surveillance trends. With a growing global population of connected wearable users, this could potentially help improve the earlier diagnosis and management of infectious individuals and improve timeliness and precision of tracking infectious disease outbreaks. However, despite these possibilities, there are important considerations when interpreting wearable data, including generalisability of user populations, sensor accuracy and comparability, and overfitting of models. Additionally, before deploying such tools as a global health solution, the proactive integration of community engagement through a user-centred design is, at a minimum, required to begin mitigating the risk of digital health illiteracy, structural inequality, and social marginality. Regional frameworks establishing trans- parent standards for participant data protection as data privacy, data use, and data rights are required to truly protect participant’s rights, empower participants, and minimise risk of harm. As these sensors continue to evolve, standardised data and reporting, as well as collaboration and data sharing across study and technology groups will also be necessary." En bref issu de l'étude.