It is claimed that your smartwatch, as well as other smart wearables that continuously measure the users’ vital statistics like heart rates, skin temperature, and other physiological indicators, can provide sufficient information that may help in determining possible coronavirus infection a few days before an individual is diagnosed with the virus, after doing a test.
Such devices include the Apple Watch, Garmin, and Fitbit watches, as well as other brands from producers of smart wearables, could indicate whether an individual is positive for COVID-19, even before the known symptoms are felt, at which time they have become symptomatic and tests could detect the presence of the virus. This is according to studies from a number of leading academic and medical institutions, including Mount Sinai Health System, and Stanford University, both in the US. It is believed in many quarters that wearable technology could play a very important role in curtailing the pandemic, as well as some other communicable diseases.
The researchers at Mount Sinai Health System discovered that the Apple Watch can detect subtle changes in a person’s heartbeat, which can provide evidence and a signal that the person may have contracted the coronavirus. This indication or signal could come as early as a week before the person may feel sick or the infection is detected after a test was conducted.
The study analyzed what was defined as heart rate variability — the variation in time between a person’s heartbeats, which is also an indicator of how well a person’s immune system is working. Persons who had COVID-19 were observed to have lower heart rate variability, while the COVID-negative persons were exhibiting a higher variability in the time between heartbeats.
It is noted that a high heart rate variability does not reflect or indicate an elevated heart rate, but rather It indicates that a person’s nervous system is quite active, adaptable, and could be more effective in coping with stress.
The Study involved about 300 health care workers in the Mount Sinai medical facility who wore Apple Watches for 153 days from April to September 2020.
Apple was not part of the Mount Sinai Study but is aware of the potentials of its smartwatches.
Data generated by smartwatches could be very helpful in the fight against the pandemic, as it is estimated that more than 50% of coronavirus cases are spread by asymptomatic persons, well unaware that they are carriers. This is according to a report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week.
A separate and independent study by researchers from Stanford University, in which the participants wore a variety of different activity trackers from Garmin, Fitbit, Apple, and others, discovered that about 81% of COVID-19 positive participants experienced an elevated increase in their resting heart rates up to nine full days before symptoms began to be observed, which, according to the study, indicated the onset of symptoms.
The Stanford researchers used the smartwatch data to correctly identify up to 66% of COVID-19 cases, four to seven days before the participants showed symptoms, as reported in their study published in Nature Biomedical Engineering in November last year. The study examined data from 32 persons who tested positive for covid-19 among more than 5,000 participants.
The Stanford research team has gone ahead to create an alarm system that alerts wearers of smart devices that their heart rate has been elevated for a sustained period of time,
It is believed that such technology could assist to mitigate some of the observed shortcomings in relation to testing for coronavirus.
Manufacturers of these smart wearables are also looking at how the technology could be used to fight the virus and have started funding research in this direction.
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