Defense Dept. to Use mHealth Wearables to Test COVID-19 Treatments

Originally published in mHealth Intelligence

The US Department of Defense is launching a massive project aimed at using mHealth wearables to identify new treatments for people infected with the Coronavirus.

The DoD is working with physIQ, a Chicago-based digital health company, on the project, which will collect data from patients at military hospitals across the country and in southeast Asia. Also involved are the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine (HJF) and the Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defense.

The project will use wearable mHealth devices from PhysIQ to collect and analyze data in real time from both patients who have been infected by the COIVD-19 virus and those at high risk of exposure.

“We are fortunate to have previously worked with physIQ in our fight against Ebola and Sepsis in Africa and are striving to rapidly translate those novel tools and strategies for the COVID-19 pandemic,” Danielle Clark, HJF’s director of the Austere Environments Consortium for Enhanced Sepsis Outcomes (ACESO) program, said in a press release. “Our goal is to develop a suite of technologies, including physiologic monitoring to identify patients at risk of progression to severe disease, detect infection prior to symptom onset, and ultimately guide clinical decisions.”

“We plan to track thousands of patients and high-risk contacts, as well as front-line healthcare workers,” she added. “It is critical that we have tools to differentiate those who should self-isolate at home from those who require hospitalization.”

“Every day it is becoming more obvious that we need to deliver COVID-19 care in the home, as hospital capacity cannot keep up with the fallout of this devastating virus,” added physIQ CEO Gary Conkright. “Achieving this will require clinical and physiological insight traditionally not available in an outpatient environment or with periodic spot checks of vitals that appear to be lagging indicators with this virus. With wearable biosensors and advanced analytics, we can provide continuous, high-fidelity, multidimensional physiological insight required to understand and better treat this disease.”