A Wearable Monitoring Device for COVID-19 Biometric Symptoms Detection

Background

Monitoring COVID-19 symptoms has become a critical task in controlling the spread of the virus and preventing hospitalizations. Aiming to contribute to efficient monitoring solutions, this article presents the development and testing of a wearable device capable of continuous monitoring biometric signals associated with the presence of COVID-19, such as the heart rate, the blood oxygen saturation, and the body temperature.

Methods

To ensure continuous monitoring the device is designed to be worn in the ear. Here, the temperature is measured through a non-contact infrared temperature sensor placed inside the ear canal while the heart rate and the pulse oximetry signals are monitored through a photoplethysmography reflective sensor positioned at the earlobe.

The proposed device's performance was evaluated by comparing it against a medical certified station. Usability and ergonomics were assessed through users' questionnaires. Additionally, experiments were performed to evaluate the hearing loss when the proposed device is in use. Data was acquired from 30 individuals of different sex, aged between 20 and 43 years old. In relation to usability and ergonomics the variation in ear dimensions was accessed and related to the device's comfort limitations.

Results

The temperature measurement produced a moderate correlation ($R=0.42$), despite a higher standard deviation was found in the proposed solution. This is due to the limited variability in temperature data, creating a short measuring range, as only healthy people were tested. The heart rate measurement also showed good correlation ($R=0.96$), with the proposed solution showing good repeatability with a standard deviation of 6.06 BPM, however, the SpO2 measurement was suboptimal ($R=0.14$).

The ergonomic evaluation revealed that most participants found the device shape comfortable, but some found the dimensions not adequate.

Additionally, the device was found to be user-friendly, with most participants reporting that they found it to be intuitive, and none reported a major loss in hearing in a normal conversation, however, there's a negligible loss of approximately 0.56 dB.

Conclusions

During this study, it was possible to develop and evaluate a wearable device that was suggested for monitoring biometric signals. The device demonstrated great reliability in temperature and heart rate measurement but showed limitations in the accuracy of pulse oximetry. The main contribution of this work is the evaluation of a continuous non-invasive monitoring concept for COVID-19 related biometric signals, which indicates good applicability in the case study.