A portion of the future of digital health was presented by researchers from Mount Sinai in the form of an Apple Watch.
The team’s Warrior’s Watch study is one of the first on portable devices used to identify COVID-19 in humans. It appears that wearing such a device can identify the virus up to seven days earlier than current testing methods, such as nose swabs.
This new method can pave the way for future diagnostic methods and help detect and improve virus management.
The team’s study is in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.
How to detect COVID-19 portable devices
Throughout the course of the study, which runs from April to September 2020, the team recruited several hundred health workers from Mount Sinai. These contestants wore Apple Watches paired with their iPhone apps, and used the app to collect and monitor 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 researchers of the study paid close attention to was heart rate variability (HRV), something that is detected when a person’s nervous system is tense.
What the team noticed was that through the use of an Apple Watch and participants’ health, they could closely monitor infections and predict infections up to a week before traditional tests confirmed the diagnoses.
What’s more, they noted that HRV patterns decreased to normal one to two weeks after diagnosis.
How it can be useful against COVID-19
By helping to detect COVID-19 thanks to portable items, more people were able to isolate more quickly, thus reducing the spread of the virus during the important week before the tests.
More importantly, however, this method can be performed remotely. No health professionals need to be at risk to perform traditional COVID-19 tests, as the diagnosis would be expected early and early.
The team emphasizes that it is still collecting data on how wearing Apple Watches and other portable devices can further help to discover what impact COVID-19 has on healthcare workers’ health, and how factors such as sleep and physical activity are related to the disease.