Shortly after the covid-19 pandemic shut the world down last year, many wearables manufacturers and researchers announced studies to see if their technology could potentially help detect the virus before it spread. Ava, a fertility tracking company, has one particularly ambitious study in which 2,000 Liechtenstein citizens wore the company’s trackers to see if the device could pick up covid symptoms before they appeared. Now Ava has announced that the company is starting another investigation to see if the tracker can detect pre-symptomatic covid-19 in real time. But now that the vaccine is more widely available and an end to lockdowns is in sight, what does it really mean to continue this kind of research?
One of the biggest problems with covid-19 detection is the fact that a person can spread the virus before they even realize they are sick. Portable devices, capable of collecting data 24/7 over an extended period of time, seemed as a natural platform for researchers who want to learn more about covid-19 and stop its spread. Ava’s first collaboration with Liechtenstein researchers found that an algorithm could accurately detect 70% of covid-19 positive infections up to seven days before symptoms appeared.
That’s cool, but this capability isn’t unique to Ava. The Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute (RNI) at West Virginia University released preliminary investigation several months ago that it could detect covid-19 symptoms up to three days before they appeared with 90% accuracy. (The sample size was very small.) Whoop also published one peer-reviewed paper says the recovery tracker can be used to detect covid-19 infections based on decreases in users’ respiratory rate during sleep. Hell, even Fitbit is do his own studyThe thing is, most of these studies tried to see if early detection was feasible. There’s a gap between ‘this thing could work’ and ‘this is how it’s going to be used in real life’.
What makes Ava’s new study remarkable is the fact that it uses the algorithm that built it and tests how effective it is in real time and in the real world. In fact, this is the next step in getting this kind of predictive technology out of the lab and onto consumers’ wrists.
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For the new study, Ava plans to provide a tracker to more than 20,000 participants of all genders in both general and high-risk populations. They then wear the Ava tracker at night for up to nine months while they sleep, and can see an AI-generated health indicator in the morning: ‘no change’, ‘small changes, so stay home and isolate’, and ‘changes that possibly signaling covid-19. Asymptomatic participants will also receive a diagnostic test should the app identify them as potentially ill.
Another interesting fact is that because Ava is a fertility tracker, the company trained the algorithm on data from nearly 500 women who reported infection in the app. Those data were then extrapolated to non-female subjects. This is important because for the vast majority of medical history it has been the other way around.
“While medical research has traditionally been based on data and research with male participants and then generalized to women, at Ava we turn the script around – first understanding women’s physiology and then adjusting algorithms to generalize them to the entire population,” said Lea von Bieder, co-founder and CEO of Ava. said in a statement.
But even if this turns out to be an effective investigation, it won’t end until November. At that point, most people should have received a covid-19 vaccine. Unfortunately, this is one of the cases where it is needed, and rigorous clinical testing is sometimes not fast enough to deal with current events – even if there is regulatory help to speed up the process.
Take the United States Food and Drug Administration. Early on, the FDA issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) to help accelerate the release of technology that could help combat covid-19. That doesn’t mean accelerated technology will magically find its way to market. It took until March 19 for the FDA to do this allow to the Tiger Tech COVID Plus Monitor. The device itself is a non-diagnostic screening tool worn on the arm that uses light sensors to check for ‘biomarkers’. Hypercoagulation – or blood clotting more easily than normal – has been identified as a common abnormality in covid-19 cases. The device itself is intended to be used in conjunction with temperature screening, a type of backup method, to limit spread in public environments such as hospitals, schools, offices, theme parks, stadiums and airports. This technology would be great to reopen, but it’s also not at all clear how the Tiger Tech device would be used in the coming months. You may never see one, despite the fact that the FDA has approved the device for the market.
Ultimately, these efforts are still worth it, if not for this pandemic, the next flu outbreak or whatever contagious virus decides to wreak havoc. It is quite possible that the lessons learned from covid-19 can be easily applied to other infectious diseases. One can only hope.