Part of the future of digital health has been presented by researchers at Mount Sinai in the form of an Apple Watch.
The team’s Warrior Watch Study is one of the first on the topic of wearable devices used to identify COVID-19 in humans. It turns out that wearing such a device can identify the virus up to seven days earlier than current testing methods, such as nasal swabs.
This new method could pave the way for future diagnostic methods and help detect and improve management of the virus.
The team’s study is published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.
How wearable devices detect COVID-19
During the investigation, which ran from April to September 2020, the team hired hundreds of health workers from Mount Sinai. These participants wore Apple Watches linked to their iPhone apps and used the app to collect and track their health status. They also completed daily surveys to provide feedback on possible COVID-19 symptoms and other factors such as stress.
The main focus that the study researchers paid a lot of attention to was heart rate variability (HRV), which is something that detects when a person’s nervous system is under stress.
What the team noticed was that through this method of wearing an Apple Watch and closely monitoring the health of the participants, they could predict infections for up to a week before traditional tests confirmed the diagnoses.
In addition, they noted that HRV patterns returned to normal one to two weeks after diagnosis.
How These Can Be Helpful Against COVID-19
By helping to detect COVID-19 earlier thanks to wearables, more people can isolate earlier, minimizing the spread of the virus during that crucial week before tests are performed.
More importantly, however, this method can be performed remotely. There is no need to put health workers at risk to perform traditional COVID-19 testing as diagnosis would be expected and detected remotely and at an early stage.
The team emphasizes that it continues to collect data on how wearing Apple Watches and other wearable devices can further help discover the impact COVID-19 has on health workers’ health and how factors such as sleep and physical activity are related to the disease. .