Wearable activity trackers combined with AI may aid in early identification of COVID-19

Wearable activity trackers that monitor changes in skin temperature and heart and breathing rates, combined with artificial intelligence (AI), might be used to pick up COVID-19 infection days before symptoms start, suggests preliminary research published in the open access journal BMJ Open. The researchers base their findings on wearers of the AVA bracelet, a regulated and commercially available fertility tracker that monitors breathing rate, heart rate, heart rate variability, wrist skin temperature and blood flow, as well as sleep quantity and quality. Typical COVID-19 symptoms may take several days after infection before they appear during which time an infected person can unwittingly spread the virus. Attention has started to focus on the potential of activity trackers and smartwatches to detect all stages of COVID-19 infection in the body from incubation to recovery, with the aim of facilitating early isolation and testing of those with the infection. The researchers therefore wanted to see if physiological changes, monitored by an activity tracker, could be used to develop a machine learning algorithm to detect COVID-19 infection before the start of symptoms. Participants (1163 all under the age of 51) were drawn from the GAPP study between March 2020 and April 2021.