| Hi all. It's Tom. Early this year, as the coronavirus began its rapid, deadly advance around the globe, groups of scientists in the U.S. and Europe embarked on a quest to determine whether wearable technology—devices like smartwatches, activity trackers and sensor-laden rings—could aid in detection of the illness. Those efforts, which Kristen V Brown and I covered here, are beginning to bear fruit. One study, published Monday in Scientific Reports, found that a smart ring capable of monitoring a person's temperature continuously "may foreshadow Covid-19, even in cases when infection is not suspected," the University of California, San Francisco, said in a statement. That finding is based on data from 50 people, of thousands who participated, who were infected with Covid-19. For 38 of them, fever was identified when symptoms were unreported or even unnoticed, thanks to monitoring via rings made by Oura Health Oy in Finland. Data that comes from a device worn close to the body and measured against a baseline is better than one-off readings from a thermometer, according to the researchers. "People go in and out of fever, and a temperature that is clearly elevated for one person may not be a major aberration for another person," Ashley Mason, an assistant professor in the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and the principal investigator on the project, said in the statement. "Continual temperature information can better identify fever." The finding could be important as coronavirus cases climb apace in many parts of the U.S., especially because physicians have found that people contract and can spread Covid-19 days before they begin to feel symptoms. While much public discourse around the pandemic focuses on vaccines, early detection along with measures like mask-wearing and social distancing remain key to slowing the rate of infection, notes Ben Smarr, an assistant professor in the department of bioengineering at the Halicioğlu Data Science Institute at the University of California, San Diego. "We're still in the upswing," Smarr, the first author of the study, told me. "A ton of people don't take that seriously yet. For those who say, `We're going to hit it out of the park, we don't need to worry about Covid again,'—that's the triumph of hope over reason."
Research on wearables has big implications for the tech industry too. Devices like those made by Fitbit Inc., Apple Inc. and Oura have yet to gain widespread use. "If they can prove that one of these wearable devices can help (detect illness), it will be a huge boon," NPD analyst Eddie Hold told me earlier this year. The global wearable technology market, valued at $37.1 billion this year, is projected to rise to $104.4 billion in 2027, according to Grand View Research. Some growth is attributable to concerns over Covid-19. "The outbreak of the Covid-19 crisis has expanded the role of wearable technologies in the healthcare sector," and has opened up new applications for early detection, according to a June report by the firm.
Another recent study found that smartwatches can also be useful in picking up on the onset of Covid-19 in people who have yet to report symptoms. Published last month in Nature Biomedical Engineering, the paper analyzed data from 32 people infected with Covid-19 (from a cohort of almost 5,300) and found that 81% had notable changes in key markers measured by the watches: heart rate, daily steps or time asleep. In almost every case where scientists had information on symptoms, the alterations were detected before or at the point people started feeling sick. In four cases, they were detected a whole nine days earlier. "Using retrospective smartwatch data, we show that 63% of the Covid-19 cases could have been detected before symptom onset," the researchers wrote.
Michael Snyder, a geneticist at the Stanford University School of Medicine and an author of the study, said that as wearable technology becomes more affordable, it could also be used in the early detection of a range of illnesses in parts of the world where access to health care is scarce. Snyder, who with colleagues is carrying out research aimed at setting up an early warning system for device users, compares the data gleaned from smartwatches to the information that comes from speedometers and gas gauges. "Would you drive your car around without a dashboard?" he asked. "If we drive around without any sensors, we're just waiting for things to break down. It still floors me that people don't wear this stuff." —Tom Giles | 
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