Shortly after the covid-19 pandemic closed the world last year, many carriers and researchers announced studies to see if their technology could help detect the virus before it spreads. Ava, a fertility tracking company, has launched a particularly ambitious study in which 2,000 Liechtenstein citizens carried company followers to see if the device could raise covid symptoms before they appeared. Now, Ava has announced that the company is launching another study to see if its tracker can detect pre-symptomatic covid-19 in real time. But with the vaccine now widely available and the end of blockages in sight, what does it mean to continue this type of research?
One of the biggest problems with detecting covid-19 is that a person can spread the virus before they even realize they are sick. They looked like portable devices that are capable of collecting data 24/7 over an extended period of time as a natural platform for researchers who want to know more about covid-19 and stop its spread. Ava’s first collaboration with researchers in Liechtenstein found that an algorithm could accurately detect 70% of covid-19 positive infections up to seven days before symptoms occur.
It’s great, but this ability is not unique to Ava. West Virginia University Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute (RNI) launched preliminary research a few months ago that it could detect covid-19 symptoms up to three days before it appeared with a 90% accuracy rate. (Sample size was very small.) Whoop also posted a work evaluated by colleagues saying that his recovery tracker could be used to detect covid-19 infections based on decreases in users’ breathing rate during sleep. Hell, even Fitbit is doing his own study. The problem is that most of these studies have tried to see if early detection was feasible. There is a gap between “this could work” and “this is how it will be used in real life”.
What makes the new Ava study remarkable is that it takes the algorithm it built and tests how efficient it is in real time and in the real world. Basically, this is the next step to get this type of predictive technology out of the lab and on the wrists of consumers.
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For the new study, Ava intends to provide a tracker to more than 20,000 participants of all genders, both in the general population and in those at high risk. Then they will wear the Ava tracker for up to nine months at night while they sleep and in the morning they can see an indicator of health generated by AI: could signal covid-19. “Asymptomatic participants will be given a diagnostic test, if the application identifies them as potentially sick.
Another interesting aspect is that because Ava is a fertility tracking tool, the company trained the algorithm on data from nearly 500 women who reported infection in the application. These data were then extrapolated to non-female subjects. This is significant because for the vast majority of medical history, it was the other way around.
“While medical research has historically been based on data and research using male participants, then generalized to women, we return the scenario to Ava – we first understand women’s physiology, then adapt algorithms to generalize to the entire population. “, Co-founder and CEO Ava Lea von Bidder said in a statement.
However, even if this turns out to be an effective process, the study will not be completed until November. By then, most people should have received a covid-19 vaccine. Unfortunately, this is a case where it is necessary, rigorous clinical testing is sometimes not fast enough to deal with current events as they happen – even if there is regulatory help to speed up the process.
Take the US Food and Drug Administration. Initially, the FDA issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to help accelerate the elimination of technology that could help fight covid-19. This does not mean that accelerated technology will find a magic path in the market. It took until March 19 for the FDA to do so grant award to the Tiger Tech COVID Plus monitor. The device itself is a non-diagnostic screening tool worn on the arm, which uses light sensors to check for “biomarkers”. Hypercoagulation – or easier-than-normal blood clotting – has been identified as a common abnormality in covid-19 cases. The device itself is intended to be used in conjunction with temperature screening, as a backup method, to limit the spread in public settings such as hospitals, schools, offices, theme parks, stadiums and airports. This technology would be great for reopening, but it’s also not at all clear how the Tiger Tech device would be used in the next few months. You may never see one, despite the fact that the FDA has approved the device for the market.
Finally, these efforts are still worthwhile, if not for this pandemic, then the next outbreak of influenza or any infectious virus decides to wreak havoc. It is very possible that the lessons learned from covid-19 can be easily applied to other infectious diseases. One can only hope.