Wearable devices as a valid support for diagnostic excellence: lessons from a pandemic going forward

Abstract

Today, the use of wearable devices is continuously increasing with many different application fields. Their low-cost and wide availability make these devices proper instruments for long-term monitoring, potentially useful to detect physiological changes related to influenza or other viruses. The relevance of this aspect and the impact of such technology have become evident particularly in the last year, during COVID-19 emergency; (big) data from wearable devices (already worn by many citizens) together with artificial intelligence techniques gave birth to specific studies dedicated to quickly identify patterns discriminating between healthy and infected people. These evaluations are made on the basis of parameters measured by these devices, among which heart rate, physical activity, and sleep seem to play a dominant role. This could be extremely significant in terms of early detection and limit of contagion risk. However, there is still a lot of research to be conducted in terms of measurement accuracy, data management (privacy and security issues), and results exploitation, in order to reach an accurate and reliable solution helping the whole healthcare system particularly in epidemic events, such as the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.