Could your smartwatch tell you when you're getting sick?

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2021-09-30 01:00

International

Virus tracking could be bolstered with the help of wearable devices like smartwatches, according to international researchers who say the technology could help limit the spread of respiratory viruses. The team inoculated 31 lucky people with the swine flu, and 18 people with the common cold, and found wearable devices loaded with infection and sickness severity data were able to tell the difference between infection and non-infection with 92 per cent accuracy for swine flu and 88 per cent accuracy for the common cold. They were also able to distinguish between mild and moderate infection 24 hours before symptoms developed with 90 per cent accuracy for swine flu and 89 per cent accuracy for the cold.

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Journal/
conference: JAMA Network Open

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Duke University, USA

Funder: Dr Chiu is supported by the Biomedical Research Centre award to the Imperial College Healthcare National Health Service (NHS) Trust. Infrastructure support was provided by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Imperial Biomedical Research Centre and the NIHR Imperial Clinical Research Facility. The Influenza A/California/04/09 challenge virus was donated by ITS Innovation, London, UK. The influenza viral challenge was supported by grant N66001-17-2-4014 from Prometheus Program of the DARPA and the rhinovirus study was supported by grant D17AP00005 from the Biochronicity Program of DARPA.

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