Can a Smart Watch Detect Covid-19?

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Can a Smart Watch Detect Covid-19?

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Wow, look where technology is looking to go next. 8-)

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Can a Smart Watch Detect Covid-19?
By Victoria Song on 14 May 2020 at 1:00AM

"The notification popped up without warning just as I was syncing the Whoop tracker I was testing: The tracker had a new metric, respiratory rate. Truthfully, I almost ignored it. But the notification used the phrase covid-19, and my eyes widened.

At 7 am, I was bleary-eyed, under-caffeinated, and still adjusting to my new reality of sheltering in place. But, from what I could tell, this niche tracker was telling me that there was a possible correlation between my sleeping respiratory rate and the novel coronavirus dominating headlines. Was this real or marketing bullshit?

The Whoop may have been the first wearable tech company to alert me to the relationship between metrics on a wearable and covid-19, but it certainly wasn’t the last. It seemed wearable companies big and small all had the same idea: That their devices might be useful in the fight against covid-19. It looked promising – a logical progression of how wearables in the past few years have increasingly blurred the boundary between wellness tech and medical devices. Apple Watches and a few other smartwatches can now take electrocardiograms – a test that can measure the electrical activity of your heartbeat – straight from the wrist. But wearables have mostly focused on things like sleep, reproductive health, and heart disease. Detecting infectious diseases is newer territory, and arguably not something these devices were really designed for.

For every heartwarming story of an Apple Watch or Fitbit saving someone’s life, there’s another lurking about health tech peddling false promises and shady marketing passed off as science. With the stakes of covid-19 so high, how much of this is a genuine desire by wearables companies to lend their expertise during an unprecedented crisis? How much is a PR play meant to drum up goodwill at a time when consumers are more careful with their purse strings? And crucially, is a future where your smartwatch warns you before you get sick even possible?

It might sound like science fiction, but there’s reason to believe wearables could be useful in detecting infections. Whether researchers can figure it out in time to make a difference against covid-19 is another story.

My Zoom chat with Michael Snyder was the first interview I’ve ever done where someone other than myself was wearing multiple smartwatches – three watches and an Oura smart ring to be exact. There’s not much reason to unless you’re a tech reviewer or researching potential applications of what these devices can do. Snyder, the director of genomics and personalised medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, is very much the latter.

Snyder heads one of two coronavirus-related studies Fitbit is involved in, the Wearables Data Study, which looks to study whether wearables can predict covid-19. (The other is the DETECT study by Scripps Research Translational Institute, which aims to improve detection and containment of outbreaks.) He told me there is actually clinical evidence that wearables might be capable of detecting infectious diseases early based on a study Stanford published in 2017 that found these devices could be useful in identifying when you get sick by catching physiological abnormalities.

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Michael Snyder, director of genomics and personalised medicine at Stanford, straps on a lot of wearables in his hunt to see if they can help detect infectious diseases early. (Image: Steve Fisch/Stanford)

The exact metrics that researchers are studying vary, depending on what the sensors a participant’s smartwatch or fitness tracker can track. Generally speaking, while wearables makers are providing access to hardware, a population for researchers to study (their user base), and data for those who opt-in, medical researchers are the ones trying to find patterns in the data. There are differences depending on the study, but the researchers I spoke with are examining a wide range of metrics that include heart rate, heart rate variability, sleep, blood oxygen saturation levels, respiratory rate, skin temperature, and even general activity to find a link between covid-19 symptoms and the data tracked by wearable devices. If that seems like a lot of metrics, it’s because there’s a lot we don’t know about the novel coronavirus, and researchers are looking for anything that might stand out.

One significant metric is ... "

https://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2020/05/can-a ... t-covid-19
PinkDiamond
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