Can Your Wearable Device Actually Detect COVID-19?
Imagine blasting past the last quarter mile of your strenuous treadmill run one Saturday morning only to receive a subtle buzz on your fitness tracker hopefully notifying you that your daily exercise goal has been achieved, far surpassing the “glorious” 10,000 step mark. Wiping off the hard-earned sweat from your face, you proceed to take a look at your wearable device as you head towards the kitchen to make yourself a scrumptious, nutrient-dense breakfast. However, rather than being awarded for starting the morning off right, you receive a grave warning sign about the adverse changes in your heart and respiratory rates that occurred the night before.
“But I look and feel fine,” you whisper to yourself while restlessly searching the Internet to see if the changes in your biometrical data are linked to something more serious. Despite not feeling any of the symptoms associated with the numerous illnesses that you self-diagnose yourself with, you decide to get screened for COVID-19 and the results come back positive. Questioning the validity of the doctor and of the unfortunate outcome, you exclaim, “How can this be?! I don’t have ANY of the symptoms. No loss of smell, no coughing, no fever. It doesn’t make any sense.”
While such a scenario may seem unrealistic and slightly far-fetched, thousands of healthcare workers, professional athletes and everyday individuals alike have been able to use the health data measured by their digital fitness trackers to help detect the virus early on. To take a case in point, three-time PGA Tour winner Scott Stallings and Professional Golfer Nick Watney were first alerted to their coronavirus symptoms from their wearable WHOOP devices. Both athletes did not feel any of the physical symptoms associated with COVID-19; however, on the day of the tournament, WHOOP data indicated a considerable increase in their respiratory and resting heart rates along with a significant decrease in their heart rate variability (HRV). Drastic changes in one or more of these key biometrics(e.g., resting heart rate, respiratory rate, sleep duration, or activity levels), according to WHOOP, may serve as early indicators of a viral infection or illness. In response to such data, Stallings and Watney requested an immediate COVID-19 test from the Tour later that morning, which unfortunately came back positive forcing them to withdraw from the tournament.
Indeed, while this devastating outcome generated a lot of hype around wearable tech within the sports industry, the predictive power of such devices also sparked a great deal of curiosity from the medical field as well. For instance, in their pursuit to test the validity of these gadgets, researchers from the Scripps Research Translational Institute in their recent study (DETECT) analyzed the changes in biometric data (e.g., resting heart rate, sleep duration, and activity levels) of 30,529 smartwatch users in the United States through a mobile app. The researchers found that changes in an individual’s unique baseline for resting heart rate, sleep and activity (which were collected via an Apple Watch or Fitbit) could help to identify — with roughly 80% prediction accuracy — whether a symptomatic person was likely to contract the virus.
Moreover, a similar study led by Professor Michael Snyder of Stanford University School of Medicine also found promising results that demonstrated the ability of fitness trackers to pick up the signals of the virus early — at the time or before symptoms appeared — in 85% of all positive-testing participants. What is even more impressive is the fact that, in one particular case, a smartwatch was able to spot the first signal of COVID-19 infection nine days before the individual reported more obvious symptoms!
With that being said, such breakthrough findings confirming the virus predicting potential of wearable devices is worth considering as it may provide public health officials with a vital and cost-effective tool for identifying coronavirus hotspots early on. Moreover, the data would also encourage individuals (who are potentially infected) to self-isolate, seek diagnostic testing and take other precautionary measures to avoid spreading the virus unknowingly to others.
By all means, while the growing functionality of such devices will continue to generate a booming market for large tech companies in the years to come, the real challenge to consider here is whether the wellness space can transform these “mainstream” gadgets into affordable, life-saving tools that everyone can use to improve their health.
