The rise of Wearable Devices during COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic created a havoc globally and exists even after an year of its spread. Several reasons can be considered: people are in close contact with each other i.e. short range (1 meter), the healthcare system is not much developed or out of facilities to manage and fight with this pandemic even in developed countries such as USA, UK and European countries. There is a high need in healthcare for remote monitoring of COVID-19 symptoms. In the past year, a number of IoT-based devices and wearables have been introduced by researchers providing good results in terms of high accuracy in diagnosing patients in the prodromal phase and in monitoring the symptoms of patients i.e. respiratory rate, heart rate, temperature etc. In this systematic review we have analyzed these wearables and their need in healthcare system. The research is conducted within three databases: IEEE Xplore®, Web of Science®, and PubMed Central®, between December 2019 and June 2021. This article is based on PRISMA guidelines. Initially 1100 articles were identified while searching the scientific literature regarding this topic. Afterscreening ultimately, 70 articles were fully evaluated and included in this review. These articles are studied into two categories. The first one belongs to the on-body sensors (wearables), their types and position and the use of AI technology with ehealth wearables in different scenarios from screening to contact tracing. In the second category we discuss the problems and solutions in utilizing these wearables globally. This systematic review will provide an extensive overview of wearable systems for the remote management and automated assessment of COVID-19, taking into account the reliability and acceptability of the implemented technologies.

COVID-19 pandemic created a havoc globally and exists even after an year of its spread. Several reasons can be considered: people are in close contact with each other i.e. short range (1 meter), the healthcare system is not much developed or out of facilities to manage and fight with this pandemic even in developed countries such as USA, UK and European countries. There is a high need in healthcare for remote monitoring of COVID-19 symptoms. In the past year, a number of IoT-based devices and wearables have been introduced by researchers providing good results in terms of high accuracy in diagnosing patients in the prodromal phase and in monitoring the symptoms of patients i.e. respiratory rate, heart rate, temperature etc. In this systematic review we have analyzed these wearables and their need in healthcare system. The research is conducted within three databases: IEEE Xplore®, Web of Science®, and PubMed Central®, between December 2019 and June 2021. This article is based on PRISMA guidelines. Initially 1100 articles were identified while searching the scientific literature regarding this topic. Afterscreening ultimately, 70 articles were fully evaluated and included in this review. These articles are studied into two categories. The first one belongs to the on-body sensors (wearables), their types and position and the use of AI technology with ehealth wearables in different scenarios from screening to contact tracing. In the second category we discuss the problems and solutions in utilizing these wearables globally. This systematic review will provide an extensive overview of wearable systems for the remote management and automated assessment of COVID-19, taking into account the reliability and acceptability of the implemented technologies.