e-Covig: app and wearable to monitor COVID-19 patients
About the project
The e-Covig project, led by the Institute for Systems and Robotics / Técnico, includes an app and a wearable device to monitor COVID-19 patients. The app allows to track COVID-19 symptoms and creates automated notifications for healthcare professionals if the problem gets worse.
This low-cost technology solution was developed by a multidisciplinary team composed of students, professors and healthcare professionals. e-CoVig will provide a rigorous and real-time tracking of COVID-19 symptoms, namely body temperature and respiratory function, as well as other relevant clinical data for the diagnosis of the disease.
Each patient is assigned a unique QR code that can be used in both app and e-CoVig website. Almost all clinical data needed to monitor the health status are collected through the various features of our smartphone, namely breathing, pulse, oxygen saturation level, etc. The e-CoVig team developed a wearable device that allows to measure temperature, pulse oximetry and heart rate, which is compatible with the app. This device is aimed at patients who need a more periodic measurement of physiological parameters.
The information collected by the application, which includes a diary identifying the symptomatological changes, is then sent to the BrainAnswer platform (coordinated by the Polytechnic Institute of Castelo Branco), which allows the healthcare professionals to review the status of their patients, receive alerts for patients with abnormal parameters and whenever measurements are required.
The validation of laboratory tests for clinical data is being performed together with the College of Health Technology of Coimbra. Tests in Hospital Santa Maria are also planned.
The next step will be implementing e-Covig in real context, as a support tool for patient monitoring, together with the TraceCOVID platform, coordinated by the Ministry of Health. In the future, e-Covig can be used by patients with other pathologies.
This technology will facilitate interaction between patient-public health systems, protect health workers from infection, increase long-term monitoring and accurate diagnosis of COVID-19 and expand simultaneous monitoring.
The e-Covig project is supported by FCT, through the Research 4 COVID-19 funding. The project is led by João Sanches, Técnico professor and researcher at Institute for Systems and Robotics (ISR), in partnership with researchers from the Cardiovascular Centre of Universidade de Lisboa (CCUL), the Faculty of Medicine of ULisboa, Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT), College of Health Technology of Coimbra (EsteC) and BrainAnswer. The e-Covig project got the maximum funding provided by FCT, amounting to €30,000.
Location
Lisbon
Entities
- Instituto Superior Técnico
- Institute for Systems and Robotics (ISR)
- Cardiovascular Center of Universidade de Lisboa (CCUL) – Faculty of Medicine, Universidade de Lisboa
- Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT)
- Polytechnic Institute of Castelo Branco
- College of Health Technology of Coimbra (EsteC)
- BrainAnswer platform
Keywords
- Application
- Wearable
- Monitoring