A New Zealand company has created an app it claims can detect a COVID-19 infection before you start to feel sick.
Once installed on your wearable device, Datamine's ëlarm picks up subtle signs your heart's beating faster, your temperature's changed or you're breathing differently.
"What it's doing is going, 'You've got heightened levels that are similar to COVID-19,'" Datamine founder Paul O'Connor told The AM Show on Friday. "We've worked with a lot of clinicians around what are those symptoms."
COVID-19 is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which can spread from person-to-person even before symptoms start to show. This, combined with the fact no one in the world had immunity from it, has made it incredibly difficult to stop. Hundreds of thousands have died already, and while the mortality rate isn't clear yet, those who fall sick can spend weeks recovering - and the long-term effects remain unknown.
Viral shedding is the phase of infection where people are infectious, and it begins approximately 48 hours before symptoms show. O'Connor said if people get a heads-up to get checked for the disease before this phase begins, they might be able to go into isolation and prevent another outbreak.
"ëlarm will be of particular benefit to the vulnerable people in our communities, to front-line healthcare workers, and also to businesses desperately trying to operate safely in this difficult environment."
New Zealand has done better than most countries and stopping the virus in its tracks, with no new infections now for 13 days - and likely to lift most restrictions next week. For this reason, O'Connor says ëlarm will be targeted at the overseas market.
"For countries hit harder than New Zealand, ëlarm will help to slow the spread of the virus, because people can self-isolate and, if necessary, seek medical treatment before they infect many others. For instance, in the course of our research we talked to several people in the United States who mentioned they were anxious about going home to vulnerable loved ones. We know that ëlarm can lower that fear considerably."
Datamine says it was able to be among the first with an app that can detect COVID-19 because it's spent the past two years working on ways to store health data collected from wearables to spot previously known diseases such as influenza - from there it was just a matter of dialling in COVID-19's early symptoms.
"I think it's very encouraging that New Zealand is producing exciting innovations in the area of new surveillance tools for tracking people who are potentially infected by COVID-19 and other infectious agents," said University of Otago epidemiologist Michael Baker.
"There are many potentially useful applications for this technology. More field testing is obviously needed with this tool to assess its effectiveness and ensure it is applied to the most pressing and relevant problems."
The app doesn't diagnose COVID-19 - it just gives an early warning something might be up. Users are urged to follow health officials' advice if they suspect they might be infected.
Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield told NZME the Government hadn't been approached about the app, and expressed confidence in its own tracing app.
O'Connor said in future, other diseases - such as cancer - might be prevented by wearable devices' early warning systems.
"First up, we're going to try to solve this COVID thing - and New Zealand's done incredibly well. But that's the idea. After we get through this initial phase, then going well, whatever types of illness is it able to detect in terms of the body is fighting, but you don't necessarily know that it's fighting - elevated heart rates levels, respiratory rate change or heart rate variability. There's a lot of measurements that come off of watches and wearables these days."
