This smart ring can tell you’re developing COVID-19 even before symptoms manifest

Manufactured by Finnish startup Oura, the wearable ring collects temperature data continuously throughout the day and night, which may help detect COVID-19 infection early.

By: Longjam Dineshwori | | Updated: December 15, 2020 5:02 pm

The Oura ring monitors temperature, heart rate, respiration rate and activity. CREDIT: Oura Ring

A smart wearable ring, which can reliably detect the onset of fever, may help curb the spread of Covid-19, say researchers. Also Read - Patients with inactive cancer at high risk of severe COVID-19 infection; Study suggests

The ring that can be worn on the finger records temperature, heart rate, respiratory rate and levels of activity. Manufactured by Finnish startup Oura, the ring can collect temperature data continuously throughout the day and night, allowing researchers to measure people’s true temperature baselines and identify fever peaks more accurately. Fever is a leading symptom of COVID-19. Also Read - Alert! Coronavirus spike proteins may evolve to evade immune responses

Temperature varies not only from person to person but also for the same person at different times of the day, according to Benjamin Smarr, a professor in the Department of Bioengineering and the Halicioglu Data Sciences Institute at UC San Diego. Therefore, he highlighted the importance of collecting data continuously over long periods of time. Also Read - Beware! Coronavirus can damage your brain in many ways. Here’s what to know

Lack of continuous data is one reason why temperature spot checks are not effective for detecting COVID-19, Smarr said.

“With wearable devices that can measure temperature, we can begin to envision a public COVID early alert system,” he added.

Fever onset happens before patients experience symptoms

Smarr and his team including researchers from UC San Francisco and MIT Lincoln Lab are analysing data from 65,000 people who wore the Oura rings from March this year. The first result of the study was published in the Dec. 14 issue of the journal Scientific Reports, where they discussed ring data from the first 50 people in their sample who tested positive for Covid-19.

Of these 50 participants or Oura ring users, 38 registered higher temperatures before they experienced symptoms that made them suspect they were unwell. Some who were otherwise asymptomatic had slight fevers detectable via the rings.

This finding shows that fever onset often happened before the subjects reported symptoms, and even to those who never reported other symptoms.

“It supports the hypothesis that some fever-like events may go unreported or unnoticed without being truly asymptomatic,” the researchers noted in their research paper.

Wearable devises such as the Oura ring may contribute to identifying rates of asymptomatic illness, they said.

“If wearables allow us to detect COVID-19 early, people can begin physical isolation practices and obtain testing so as to reduce the spread of the virus,” asserted Ashley Mason, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at UC San Francisco, who is the principal investigator of the study.

However, the researcher didn’t report on how well the rings worked as infection predictors.

An algorithm that can predict the onset of COVID-19 symptoms

With this study, the researchers are trying to develop an algorithm that can predict the onset of symptoms such as fever, cough and fatigue, which are characteristic of COVID-19. This is the goal of the study and they hope to achieve it by the end of the year. They also believe such algorithms will allow public health officials to act faster to contain the spread of COVID-19.

The researchers also plan to expand their early detection methods to other infectious diseases, such as the flu, in the future.

Published : December 15, 2020 4:48 pm | Updated:December 15, 2020 5:02 pm

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