As the threat of the Coronavirus continues to rise, many companies are lending their resources to help fight the crisis. We have seen major companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook come up with different ways to fight the pandemic. Now, popular fitness-tracker-maker, Fitbit has come up with a new study to find out whether their wearables can detect COVID-19 before symptoms arise.
We saw earlier that the Google-owned company was planning to make ventilators to replenish the shortage of medical supplies. Now, the company recently announced that it is using its wearable devices in research studies by Stanford Healthcare Innovations Lab to find out if they can develop an apt algorithm to detect the early onset of infectious diseases like COVID-19 or the flu.
The “Fitbit COVID-19 Study” is integrated right in the Fitbit app for users living in the US and Canada. The company is inviting Fitbit users above 21 years who have had or currently have COVID-19 or any symptoms for infectious diseases to answer a few quick questions about their health.
Users can find the aforementioned “Study” in the Assessments & Reports section of the Discover tab in the Fitbit app. From there, users can take a quick survey and answer a few questions in the app. According to Fitbit, the questions will focus on three main points — Whether or not the user has or had or may have had flu or COVID-19, whether or not the user is experiencing or experienced any symptoms and some additional details about the user’s medical history and demographics.
The “Fitbit COVID-19 Study” aims to use the answers from the users with other health indicators from the Fitbit data to try and build an algorithm that can determine signs of COVID-19 even before the onset of the symptoms.
So, if you are a Fitbit user living in the US or Canada, you can contribute your part by answering a few quick questions. Participation is not at all mandatory and users can opt-out any time they want.
