A team of researchers at Khalifa University of Science and Technology launched an app to collect data from smartphone users to identify, through machine intelligence, whether they are in the COVID-19 ‘high risk’ category.
The app named ‘CovidSense’ will target all mobile phone users. It will also help those users under quarantine to monitor their symptoms and location, while assisting them with their health control measures. The app will record metadata and self-reported health status data, along with breathing sounds, cough, heart rate, the GPS location from a smartphone, as well as details of those who the user has interacted with.
The data collected from the smartphones can be used to monitor the evolution of the health status over a period of time, informing the status of the CoVid-19 patients to the connected physicians. At the same time, it will allow researchers to form ‘Deep Learning’ models in order to come up with a ‘reliable predictive high-risk index’ in an updated version at a future date. This update will also help minimize spreading by alerting or helping healthcare workers to act at the correct time and place.
The development of ‘CovidSense’ app is being led by Dr. Leontios Hadjileontiadis, Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Acting Chair, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Khalifa University, along with Dr Herbert F. Jelinek, Associate Professor, Dr. Ahsan Khandoker, Associate Professor, and Dr. Kinda Khalaf, Associate Professor and Associate Chair, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Khalifa University, for the metadata and physiological signal analysis, when they will be obtained from the users.
Khalifa University is also collaborating with the research Lab, Signal Processing and Biomedical Technology Unit, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, involving the development team of Tsoumalis George, Zafiris Bampos, and Iakovakis Dimitrios, for implementing the functional versions of CovidSense in both operational systems of Android and iPhone.
