It turns out that your heart rate, especially when sleeping says a lot about you. When your body starts fighting an infection, it sends histamines in response which signal the heart to route blood to the area of infection. That triggers a subtle change in your heart rate increasing which a wearable device like an Apple Watch, FitBit, Samsung running health monitoring apps and more specialized wearables can detect. It’s no wonder people have been looking for the best smartwatch for heart monitoring and the like when considering the options on the market.
What Some Wearables Track
- Heart Rate
- Movement
- Pulse-Oximetry
- Respiration Rate
- Sleep
- Temperature
What Wearables Can Do
- Assist in reducing surge of COVID-19 cases and reduce avoidable hospital visits
- Suspected and confirmed patients can be more easily identified and treated remotely
- Doctors and nurses on the frontline who may be getting sick can be identified more quickly
Loop Signal developed by Spry Health
Better Wearables Can Do More
What could be even more effective are wearables prescribed by your doctor like Loop System running Loop Signal that extrapolates your vitals and are monitored directly by a clinician. Spry Health rapidly innovated a response to the Coronavirus that can help identify suspected patients. Loop Signal monitors signs of deterioration and patients are contacted by phone and treated remotely when possible.
An impressive focus at UCSF to early detect COVID-19 in frontline doctors and nurses gives an Oura Ring to 2,000 clinicians who come in contact with sick patients. UCSF’s TemPredict study’s goal is to build an algorithm to help identify patterns of COVID-19 illness symptoms.
Oura Ring being studied at UCSF Medical
Oura Ring has a built-in temperature sensor and another wearable called BioSticker is a medical-grade adhesive sensor that sticks to the chest to more closely monitor temperature and coughing. mHealth wearables are being used by researchers at Scripps to track flu outbreaks. These are all promising health innovations in the fight of the Coronavirus.
Tracking COVID-19 Spread in the Population
Shared wearable health and location data could track spread of COVID-19 especially now that 1 in 3 Americans wear fitness tracking devices. Privacy concerns aside, this will change how the world reacts more effectively to a pandemic like the Coronavirus and potentially save lives.
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