Wrist-Worn Trackers Help Detect COVID Symptoms

Wearable activity trackers combined with artificial intelligence (AI), pick up Covid-19 infection days before symptoms start. Typical Covid-19 symptoms may take several days after infection before they appear, during which time an infected person can unwittingly spread the virus.

But in the study published in the open-access journal BMJ Open, researchers found that overall, the health tracker, combined with a computer algorithm, correctly identified 68% of Covid positive people two days before their symptoms appeared.

The international team including from University of Basel (Switzerland) and Imperial College London, pointed out that while a PCR swab test remains the gold standard for confirming Covid-19 infection, "our findings suggest that a wearable-informed machine learning algorithm may serve as a promising tool for presymptomatic or asymptomatic detection of Covid-19."

Wearable AI Trackers To Detect Covid-19

The team conducted a trial, on a AVA bracelet, and included 1,163 participants all under the age of 51 who wore the tracker at night. The device saves data every 10 seconds and requires at least 4 hours of relatively uninterrupted sleep. The bracelets were synchronized with a complimentary smartphone app on waking.

All participants took regular rapid antibody tests for Covid infection. Those with indicative symptoms took a PCR swab test as well.

The algorithm was ’trained’ using 70% of the data from day 10 to day 2 before the start of symptoms within 40 days of continuous monitoring of the 66 people who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. It was then tested on the remaining 30% of the data.

Some 73% of laboratory-confirmed positive cases were picked up in the training set, and 68% in the test set, up to 2 days before the start of symptoms.

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The researchers acknowledge that their results may not be more widely applicable.

But "wearable sensor technology is an easy-to-use, low-cost method for enabling individuals to track their health and wellbeing during a pandemic," they wrote in the paper.

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Further, "these devices, partnered with artificial intelligence, can push the boundaries of personalized medicine and detect illnesses prior to (symptom occurrence), potentially reducing virus transmission in communities".

Source-IANS