The role of wearables in the fight against COVID-19 cannot be underscored enough, earning a place among the assorted solutions that either helped to expedite a return to “normal” or that made being stuck at home bearable.

What follows is a nod to the wearable technology that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, promising to, at the very least, put us on the path back to normal.

Handwashing

The watchos7. Source: Apple

Understanding early on in the pandemic the critical importance of handwashing in slowing the spread of COVID-19, tech giant Apple announced a new feature of the company’s watchOS 7 that detects the thoroughness with which the wearer washes his or her hands based on the time spent doing so. Generally, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommend at least 20 seconds of thorough handwashing to effectively guard against germs.

Reportedly, the Apple Watch relies on motion sensors, a microphone and built-in machine learning technology to detect the motions and sounds associated with handwashing. As the wearer begins to wash, a 20 second countdown timer is activated. If the wearer completes handwashing before the 20 second cycle concludes, the watch will prompt the wearer to continue washing.

The social distancer

A collective of veteran manufacturers has developed a wearable device that enforces social distancing requirements in the manufacturing workspace in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Source: Social Distancer Technologies Inc.

The wearable, called the Social Distancer, is a device roughly the size of a credit card that measures the space between coworkers. To maintain a distance between coworkers, the device will flash red, vibrate and instruct coworkers to widen the distance between them when they are roughly 8 ft apart — 2 ft more than the recommended 6 ft — to ensure safe social distancing.

The Nymi Band

Canadian company Nymi Inc. has created a wearable device targeted at workplaces employing technicians, engineers and active workers in industries such as pharmaceutical and device manufacturing, medical equipment, chemicals, building management and industrial manufacturing.

Source: Nymi Inc.

The Nymi Band leverages both heartbeat and fingerprint authentication biometrics for securing the identity of the wearer while also ensuring that safe social distances are maintained in the workplace. According to developers, the device’s location-sensing technology facilitates social distancing by monitoring when a device comes within a pre-determined distance of another Nymi Band, thereby triggering an alert. The device can also enable wearers to gain access to their respective workplaces via a proximity-based tap of the device.

Hands off

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab has also devised a tool to help ease the post COVID-19 transition back to the workplace. Because the face acts as a vehicle of sorts, offering entryways for viruses like COVID-19, the global population has been instructed to keep their hands away from their faces. To further that point, NASA developed an electronic wearable device to serve as a reminder to folks who forget and end up touching their faces and possibly transmitting the virus.

The device, called the Pulse, issues a reminder to the wearer in the form of vibrations detected by a proximity sensor. Once the device detects that the wearer is moving his or her hands in the direction of his or her face, the wearable pulses, as the name suggests.

Rapid detection

To detect subtle signs of COVID-19 earlier, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and Defense Innovation Unit of the U.S. Department of Defense are using a system comprised of commercial technology including wearable devices.

The technology, called Rapid Analysis of Threat Exposure (RATE), includes wearables that reportedly detect warning signs of the infection before the infected person shows physical symptoms of the virus.

The wearables collect data from roughly 165 biomarkers and that data is then processed in the cloud. The system then uses a mix of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to detect subtle changes taking place in the wearer’s physiology before symptoms of the infection are evident.

Such subtle changes caught early could potentially urge the wearer to seek out medical professionals for access to testing or to change their behaviors by potentially limiting contact with others, thereby slowing the spread of the virus.

Wearables for work and school

Researchers from the University of Florida have developed a number of COVID-19 detection solutions to expedite a return to pre-COVID-19 life. Among them are the Trident smart device and the Riskband.

The Trident is a prototype smart band that relies on machine learning to monitor wearers for elevated temperatures — an early indicator of COVID-19 — via sensors on the radial artery. Although the Riskband is also a wearable device, this particular wearable is designed for school-age children in school settings that alerts the wearers when they come within an unsafe distance of another classmate. To accomplish this, the wearable’s Bluetooth signal strength is converted into distance.

For more on the University of Florida efforts to fight COVID-19 with wearables, watch the accompanying video that appears courtesy of the University of Florida.

Oura rings

A team from the University of California (UC) San Diego, UC San Francisco and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Lincoln Lab have determined that a wearable worn on the finger can offer early detection of fever before other COVID-19 symptoms emerge.

The Oura ring, which monitors the wearer’s temperature, heart and respiratory rates, and activity levels, offers uninterrupted data collection that can be used to detect fever before any other COVID-19 symptoms — cough and fatigue among others — emerge.

Worn for periods of time, the ring would enable the wearer’s baseline temperature to be established, thereby improving efforts to identify fever peaks. Temperature spot checks — the kind being administered to enable students to enter schools or patients to enter healthcare facilities and other public places amid the COVID-19 pandemic — only offer a glimpse at such data at one moment in time. As such, this method is not as effective at detecting COVID-19 positivity.

Fever detected early in the wearer could potentially lead to early COVID-19 detection, isolation and testing, ultimately limiting the spread of the virus, according to the research team.

The new normal

Now that there is a light at the end of the long COVID-19 tunnel in the form of vaccines, re-openings and falling infection rates, it is safe to assume that at least a few of these wearable devices will continue to serve a function in the post-COVID-19 world.

If not, at least they will be at the ready should another global pandemic emerge.

Check back with Engineering360 for more information on wearables and other healthcare related tools employed in the fight against COVID-19.