Can mHealth Technology Help Mitigate the Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Goal: The aim of the study herein reported was to review mobile health (mHealth) technologies and explore their use to monitor and mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: A Task Force was assembled by recruiting individuals with expertise in electronic Patient-Reported Outcomes (ePRO), wearable sensors, and digital contact tracing technologies. Its members collected and discussed available information and summarized it in a series of reports. Results: The Task Force identified technologies that could be deployed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and would likely be suitable for future pandemics. Criteria for their evaluation were agreed upon and applied to these systems. Conclusions: mHealth technologies are viable options to monitor COVID-19 patients and be used to predict symptom escalation for earlier intervention. These technologies could also be utilized to monitor individuals who are presumed non-infected and enable prediction of exposure to SARS-CoV-2, thus facilitating the prioritization of diagnostic testing.

Contactless In-Home Monitoring of the Long-Term Respiratory and Behavioral Phenotypes in Older Adults With COVID-19: A Case Series.

Currently, there is a limited understanding of long-term outcomes of COVID-19, and a need for in-home measurements of patients through the whole course of their disease. We study a novel approach for monitoring the long-term trajectories of respiratory and behavioral symptoms of COVID-19 patients at home. We use a sensor that analyzes the radio signals in the room to infer patients' respiration, sleep and activities in a passive and contactless manner. We report the results of continuous monitoring of three residents of an assisted living facility for 3 months, through the course of their disease and subsequent recovery. In total, we collected 4,358 measurements of gait speed, 294 nights of sleep, and 3,056 h of respiration. The data shows differences in the respiration signals between asymptomatic and symptomatic patients. Longitudinally, we note sleep and motor abnormalities that persisted for months after becoming COVID negative. Our study represents a novel phenotyping of the respiratory and behavioral trajectories of COVID recovery, and suggests that the two may be integral components of the COVID-19 syndrome. It further provides a proof-of-concept that contactless passive sensors may uniquely facilitate studying detailed longitudinal outcomes of COVID-19, particularly among older adults.