Fitbit, Scripps, and Stanford Announce Wearables Research Project
Can we track infectious diseases with smart device data?
Francis Scialabba
· less than 3 min read
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Your loyal wrist lieutenant may soon be moonlighting as an infectious disease field researcher.
Fitbit, the Scripps Translational Research Institute, and the Stanford University School of Medicine recently announced a research initiative to detect and track infectious diseases using data from wearables. That's not a trivial task—the standard wearable collects 250,000 data points a day, per a Stanford genetics professor.
- In January, Scripps published research showing it could accurately predict flu hotspots quicker than the CDC using 47,000 Fitbit users' anonymized data. Regionally, clusters of elevated resting heart rates corresponded with a higher concentration of patients with flu-like infections.
In other smart news
A few weeks ago, the German government launched an opt-in smartwatch "data donation" app to monitor the coronavirus's spread and assess the effectiveness of containment policies. And smart thermometer maker Kinsa has said its temperature data can identify COVID-19 hotspots faster than the CDC.
Zoom out: Though these data trails ≠ ironclad health signals, they could provide extra visibility into COVID-19's spread.
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