The Rockefeller Foundation has announced that it is collaborating with Scripps Research Institute in San Diego to create a sensor-based early warning system for COVID-19 and other viral outbreaks.

With the grant, scientists at the Scripps Research Digital Trials Center will expand outreach efforts to increase participation in the ongoing DETECT study, with a focus on underrepresented and high-risk communities across San Diego County. Launched in March 2020 with the goal of enabling scientists to detect COVID-19 or other illnesses before symptoms appear, the app-based study uses sensor data from participants' smartwatches and activity trackers to gain insights into physiological and behavioral changes associated with viral illness. To date, DETECT has enrolled more than thirty-eight thousand participants across the United States.

An early analysis of DETECT data, published last fall in Nature Medicine, showed that the information captured by wearable devices could significantly improve scientists' ability to identify infections. Moreover, wearable sensor-based technologies can help public health officials not only identify outbreaks of COVID-19, the seasonal flu, or the next novel virus of pandemic potential; they also can help track physiological responses to vaccines and treatments.

"A larger and more diverse pool of participants will allow us to refine and validate our predictive model for identifying viral illness activity, including COVID-19 and seasonal flu, based on changes in heart rate, sleep, and activity," said Jennifer Radin, a Scripps Research Translational Institute epidemiologist leading the study. "By targeting our efforts in San Diego, where we've already enrolled [more than] three thousand local participants, we hope to scale to a level where we can track population-level viral illness in real-time in a geographically defined area."

(Photo credit: Scripps Research Institute)