Germany turns to fitness-tracking app to help monitor coronavirus infections nationwide
- The initiative echoes efforts in mainland China, where various AI applications are used to help contain the pandemic
- Germany is among the five countries with the highest number of coronavirus cases worldwide, which include the United States, Spain, Italy and France
Health authorities in Germany have turned to a new fitness-tracking app to help gather more data nationwide, as government efforts intensify to monitor the spread of the coronavirus.
The Robert Koch Institute, the federal agency responsible for disease control and prevention, teamed up with healthtech start-up Thryve to develop the app called Corona-Datenspende, which translates to corona data donation.
The app works with a range of smartwatches and fitness wristbands from companies like Apple, Fitbit and Garmin. User information collected by the app includes various automatic or manually recorded activities like walking, exercise and rest; blood pressure, heart rate and temperature; and socio-demographic data such as age, gender and weight.
“Digital applications can usefully supplement the previous measures to contain Covid-19,” said Robert Koch Institute president Lothar Wieler in a statement at the launch of the app on Tuesday.
At a press conference on the same day, Wieler said: “If the sample is big enough to capture enough symptomatic patients, that would help us to draw conclusions on how infections are spreading and whether containment measures are working.”
The German initiative echoes efforts in mainland China, where there has been a surge in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) applications to help contain the spread of the coronavirus.