Can mHealth Technology Help Mitigate the Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic?
Catherine Adans-Dester, Stacy Bamberg, Francesco Bertacchi, Brian Caulfield, Kara Chappie, Danilo Demarchi, Michael Kelley Erb, Juan Estrada, Eric Fabara, Michael Freni, Karl E. Friedl, Roozbeh Ghaffari, Geoffrey Gill, Mark S. Greenberg, Reed W. Hoyt, Emil Jovanov, Christoph M. Kanzler, Dina Katabi, Meredith Kernan, Colleen M Kigin, Sunghoon Ivan Lee, Steffen Leonhardt, Nigel H. Lovell, Jose Mantilla, Thomas H. McCoy, Nell Meosky Luo, Glenn A. Miller, John T. Moore, Derek T. O’Keeffe, Jeffrey S. Palmer, Federico Parisi, Shyamal Patel, Jack Po, Benito L. Pugliese, Thomas F. Quatieri, Tauhidur Rahman, Nathan Ramasarma, John A. Rogers, Guillermo U. Ruiz‐Esparza, Stefano Sapienza, Gregory Schiurring, Lee H. Schwamm, Hadi Shafiee, Sara Silacci, Nathaniel M. Sims, Tanya Talkar, William J. Tharion, James A. Toombs, Christopher Uschnig, Gloria Vergara-Díaz, Paul W. Wacnik, May D. Wang, James Welch, Lina Williamson, Ross Zafonte, Adrian Zai, Yuan‐Ting Zhang, Guillermo J. Tearney, Rushdy Ahmad, David R. Walt, Paolo Bonato
Abstract
<italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Goal:</i> 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. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Methods:</i> 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. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Results:</i> 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. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Conclusions:</i> 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.