The man behind a wearable technology application now being trialled by border workers in the fight against COVID-19 says it is 83 percent effective at detecting symptoms days before people become sick.
The Ministry of Health announced on Thursday that it had begun a month-long trial of the ëlarm application, created by Auckland-based developers Datamine. It connects to wearable devices and informs users about early physiological changes that may indicate they are becoming unwell days before they experience symptoms, including those for COVID-19.
Datamine founder Paul O'Connor told The AM Show on Friday that its user base is growing at a rate of about 20 percent per week, with users in countries across the world.
"The guys in the team started developing it when COVID-19 was hitting last year. We have got it to a point where it is able to detect 83 percent of people before they know that they actually have COVID-19," he said.
With the app being used overseas by people with COVID-19 and more data now rolling in, the developers have been able to improve its effectiveness at picking up on symptoms.
"[Last June], we were using some modelling techniques and we hadn't seen enough COVID," he said. "But now we have had users who have had COVID on the app. We are able to measure that and develop our models further.
"We are at that 83 percent level. The team is still working on it, so we think we will be able to get it up towards close to 90 percent."
The team's focus is currently on COVID-19, but the app could have other uses, such as for dementia patients who have become dehydrated and need to be alerted to drink, O'Connor said.
Up to 500 workers will be able to volunteer to take part in the trial, which began this week at the border.
After they install the app on their smart device - Datamine is providing devices to those who don't have them - the workers will receive regular email reminders and alerts throughout the day and can check their own health information. A personalised health baseline is created for each user based on their data history and all data will be private to the individual participants.
"Contact tracing is at the heart of our COVID-19 response, and it's essential we find and treat people who might have been exposed to this difficult virus before it has a chance to take hold in our communities," said Shayne Hunter, the ministry's deputy director-general of data and digital.
"There's no single fix for COVID-19, so it's important we use the tools and technologies at our disposal to give contact tracers and health workers a good head start. We already have good tools such as the NZ COVID Tracer app and QR code posters, and the Ministry of Health is investigating other technologies that might provide further support for our contact tracing."
Hunter said if ëlarm lives up to its potential, it could "provide early notification to our critical border workforce if they're becoming unwell".
"That means they can take appropriate action such as self-isolating and being tested for COVID-19," he said.
"Even though our border workers are vaccinated, the reality is that some people will still feel unsure about the increased risk of exposure to COVID-19 from working on the border. We want to really support this essential work by giving people good tools to monitor their own health to keep themselves, their whānau and all of New Zealand safe and healthy."
University of Otago epidemiologist Michael Baker last year said it was "encouraging" that New Zealand was producing innovations "in the area of new surveillance tools for tracking people who are potentially infected by COVID-19 and other infectious agents".
"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," he said.
