Philips and DOD aim to detect COVID early with wearable devices and an algorithm

The Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit and Philips are studying the ability of Garmin watches and Oura rings to collect data that can offer an early warning of COVID-19 infection. [Photo courtesy of the DOD Defense Innovation Unit]Philips and the Pentagon are testing what they call “predictive bio-wearables” that can track changes in vital signs to offer an early warning of COVID-19 infection.

Philips and the DOD Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) have used Garmin watches — the Fenix 6 and Vivoactive 4 — and Oura rings on more than 11,000 test patients since June 2020. They’ve measured respiration rate, oxygen saturation and heart rate with the watch and heart rate and skin temperature with the ring.

An algorithm watches for changes detected by the cloud-connected devices and offers a score from 1 to 100, with a higher number representing a higher likelihood of infection. The researchers compare it to a check-engine light warning that something could be wr…

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The top digital health startups in the world

About two-fifths of the startups in CB Insights’ second annual Digital Health 150 list are engaged in telehealth, a high-demand area amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

That is one of the big takeaways from the list of 150 promising digital health startups that CB Insights released today. CB Insights’ research team picked the 150 startups after using the company’s platform to evaluate nearly 8,000 startups on factors including patent activity, business relations, investor profile, news sentiment analysis, proprietary Mosaic scores, market potential, competitive landscape, team strength and tech novelty. (Download the full report here.)

The 62 telehealth startups on the list include telemedicine platforms such as cardiology platform Heartbeat Health (New York), virtual visit platform Doctor On Demand (San Francisco), and Livi medical app creator KRY (Stockholm, Sweden). There are remote monitoring and diagnostics companies including Oura (Oulu, Finland…

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