Evaluation of a machine learning approach utilizing wearable data for prediction of SARS-CoV-2 infection in healthcare workers

Physiological Data Collected From Wearable Devices Identify and Predict Inflammatory Bowel Disease Flares

BACKGROUND & AIMS

Wearable devices capture physiological signals noninvasively and passively. Many of these parameters have been linked to inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) activity. We evaluated the associative ability of several physiological metrics with IBD flares and how they change before the development of flare.

METHODS

Participants throughout the United States answered daily disease activity surveys and wore an Apple Watch (Apple), Fitbit (Google), or Oura Ring (Oura Health). These devices collected longitudinal heart rate (HR), resting heart rate (RHR), heart rate variability (HRV), steps, and oxygenation. C-reactive protein, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, and fecal calprotectin were collected as standard of care. Linear mixed-effect models were implemented to analyze HR, RHR, steps, and oxygenation, and cosinor mixed-effect models were applied to HRV circadian features. Mixed-effect logistic regression was used to determine the predictive ability of physiological metrics.

RESULTS

Three hundred and nine participants were enrolled across 36 states. Circadian patterns of HRV differed significantly between periods of inflammatory flare and remission and symptomatic flare and remission. Marginal means for HR and RHR were higher during periods of inflammatory flare and symptomatic flare. There were fewer daily steps during inflammatory flares. HRV, HR, and RHR differentiated whether participants with symptoms had inflammation. HRV, HR, RHR, steps, and oxygenation were significantly altered up to 7 weeks before inflammatory and symptomatic flares.

CONCLUSIONS

Longitudinally collected physiological metrics from wearable devices can identify and change before IBD flares, suggesting their feasibility to monitor and predict IBD activity.

Evaluation of Machine Learning to Detect Influenza Using Wearable Sensor Data and Patient-Reported Symptoms: Cohort Study

BACKGROUND

Machine learning offers quantitative pattern recognition analysis of wearable device data and has the potential to detect illness onset and monitor influenza-like illness (ILI) in patients who are infected.

OBJECTIVE

This study aims to evaluate the ability of machine-learning algorithms to distinguish between participants who are influenza positive and influenza negative in a cohort of symptomatic patients with ILI using wearable sensor (activity) data and self-reported symptom data during the latent and early symptomatic periods of ILI.

METHODS

This prospective observational cohort study used the extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) classifier to determine whether a participant was influenza positive or negative based on 3 models using symptom-only data, activity-only data, and combined symptom and activity data. Data were collected from the Home Testing of Respiratory Illness (HTRI) study and FluStudy2020, both conducted between December 2019 and October 2020. The model was developed using the FluStudy2020 data and tested on the HTRI data. Analyses included participants in these studies with an at-home influenza diagnostic test result. Fitbit (Google LLC) devices were used to measure participants' steps, heart rate, and sleep parameters. Participants detailed their ILI symptoms, health care-seeking behaviors, and quality of life. Model performance was assessed by area under the curve (AUC), balanced accuracy, recall (sensitivity), specificity, precision (positive predictive value), negative predictive value, and weighted harmonic mean of precision and recall (F2) score.

RESULTS

An influenza diagnostic test result was available for 953 and 925 participants in HTRI and FluStudy2020, respectively, of whom 848 (89%) and 840 (90.8%) had activity data. For the training and validation sets, the highest performing model was trained on the combined symptom and activity data (training AUC=0.77; validation AUC=0.74) versus symptom-only (training AUC=0.73; validation AUC=0.72) and activity-only (training AUC=0.68; validation AUC=0.65) data. For the FluStudy2020 test set, the performance of the model trained on combined symptom and activity data was closely aligned with that of the symptom-only model (combined symptom and activity test AUC=0.74; symptom-only test AUC=0.74). These results were validated using independent HTRI data (combined symptom and activity evaluation AUC=0.75; symptom-only evaluation AUC=0.74). The top features guiding influenza detection were cough; mean resting heart rate during main sleep; fever; total minutes in bed for the combined model; and fever, cough, and sore throat for the symptom-only model.

CONCLUSIONS

Machine-learning algorithms had moderate accuracy in detecting influenza, suggesting that previous findings from research-grade sensors tested in highly controlled experimental settings may not easily translate to scalable commercial-grade sensors. In the future, more advanced wearable sensors may improve their performance in the early detection and discrimination of viral respiratory infections.

A machine learning approach to determine resilience utilizing wearable device data: analysis of an observational cohort

Objective

To assess whether an individual's degree of psychological resilience can be determined from physiological metrics passively collected from a wearable device.

Materials and Methods

Data were analyzed in this secondary analysis of the Warrior Watch Study dataset, a prospective cohort of healthcare workers enrolled across 7 hospitals in New York City. Subjects wore an Apple Watch for the duration of their participation. Surveys were collected measuring resilience, optimism, and emotional support at baseline.

Results

We evaluated data from 329 subjects (mean age 37.4 years, 37.1% male). Across all testing sets, gradient-boosting machines (GBM) and extreme gradient-boosting models performed best for high- versus low-resilience prediction, stratified on a median Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale-2 score of 6 (interquartile range = 5-7), with an AUC of 0.60. When predicting resilience as a continuous variable, multivariate linear models had a correlation of 0.24 (P = .029) and RMSE of 1.37 in the testing data. A positive psychological construct, comprised of resilience, optimism, and emotional support was also evaluated. The oblique random forest method performed best in estimating high- versus low-composite scores stratified on a median of 32.5, with an AUC of 0.65, a sensitivity of 0.60, and a specificity of 0.70.

Discussion

In a post hoc analysis, machine learning models applied to physiological metrics collected from wearable devices had some predictive ability in identifying resilience states and a positive psychological construct.

Conclusions

These findings support the further assessment of psychological characteristics from passively collected wearable data in dedicated studies.

The Impact of SARS-CoV-2 Infection on Heart Rate Variability: A Systematic Review of Observational Studies with Control Groups

Autonomic nervous system (ANS) dysfunction can arise after severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection and heart rate variability (HRV) tests can assess its integrity. This review investigated the relationship between the impact of SARS-CoV-2 infection on HRV parameters. Comprehensive searches were conducted in four electronic databases. Observational studies with a control group reporting the direct impact of SARS-CoV-2 infection on the HRV parameters in July 2022 were included. A total of 17 observational studies were included in this review. The square root of the mean squared differences of successive NN intervals (RMSSD) was the most frequently investigated. Some studies found that decreases in RMSSD and high frequency (HF) power were associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection or the poor prognosis of COVID-19. Also, decreases in RMSSD and increases in the normalized unit of HF power were related to death in critically ill COVID-19 patients. The findings showed that SARS-CoV-2 infection, and the severity and prognosis of COVID-19, are likely to be reflected in some HRV-related parameters. However, the considerable heterogeneity of the included studies was highlighted. The methodological quality of the included observational studies was not optimal. The findings suggest rigorous and accurate measurements of HRV parameters are highly needed on this topic.

Smart Consumer Wearables as Digital Diagnostic Tools: A Review

The increasing usage of smart wearable devices has made an impact not only on the lifestyle of the users, but also on biological research and personalized healthcare services. These devices, which carry different types of sensors, have emerged as personalized digital diagnostic tools. Data from such devices have enabled the prediction and detection of various physiological as well as psychological conditions and diseases. In this review, we have focused on the diagnostic applications of wrist-worn wearables to detect multiple diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, neurological disorders, fatty liver diseases, and metabolic disorders, including diabetes, sleep quality, and psychological illnesses. The fruitful usage of wearables requires fast and insightful data analysis, which is feasible through machine learning. In this review, we have also discussed various machine-learning applications and outcomes for wearable data analyses. Finally, we have discussed the current challenges with wearable usage and data, and the future perspectives of wearable devices as diagnostic tools for research and personalized healthcare domains.