COVID Symptom Study

The COVID Symptom Study, formerly the COVID Symptom Tracker,[1] is a COVID-19 epidemiological research app developed in the United Kingdom that runs on Android and iOS. It is a collaboration between King's College London, Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals and Zoe Global Limited. The purpose of the app is to track symptoms and other salient data in a large number of people to enable epidemiological results to be calculated.

COVID Symptom Study
Developer(s)
Operating systemAndroid, iOS
TypeCOVID-19 apps
Websitecovid.joinzoe.com

Background

The idea for an app to track the spread of COVID-19 came from professor Tim Spector, an epidemiologist at King's College London. He used his startup company Zoe Global Limited to build the Covid Symptom Tracker app in collaboration with King's College London, Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals.[2][3] Initially the project was UK-based, where there is open membership.[4] In the US at a later date various cohorts from existing studies were added, including from Nurses' Health Study. This research was done in collaboration with Massachusetts General Hospital.[4] The project website states that "The app is and always will be free, and any data you provide will not be used for commercial purposes."[5]

The tracker was released as a trial for 5,000 twins,[6] using patients involved in other ZOE research projects.[2] It was later expanded for use for non-twins.[2]

The app entered the UK App Store and Play Store on 24 March, and the US App and Play stores on 29 March.[4] Within 24 hours of being available in the UK, the app had been downloaded over 1 million times.[2] As of May 2020, the app has been downloaded by over 3 million people,[4] including 2 million Britons.[7]

Research

The COVID Symptom Study requires users to reveal their location.[7] Users answer personal information including age, gender and location, as well as report if they have any underlying chronic conditions.[8] They also answer questions related to common COVID-19 symptoms, and input any illness or symptoms that they have,[4][2] as well as stating whether they have been tested for COVID-19.[8] The app then uses statistical analysis to predict whether the symptoms are consistent with COVID-19,[7] and is designed to be able to distinguish between COVID-19 symptoms and symptoms of other seasonal flus.[2] The app does not have any contact tracing functionality.[4]

Based on the data inputted into the app, the tracker suggests that 2 million people in the UK aged between 20 and 69 may have had COVID-19, and that as of May 2020, 280,000 people in that age range currently have symptoms consistent with COVID-19.[9] The study also estimates the risk level to health workers, compared with the general public.[10] Research based on the app was described in papers in Science on 5 May 2020[11] and in Nature on 11 May 2020.[12]

See also

References
  1. Chan, Andrew; Spector, Tim (11 May 2020). "Coronavirus: research reveals way to predict infection – without a test". The Conversation. Archived from the original on 12 May 2020. Retrieved 12 May 2020.
  2. "The inside story of the UK's biggest coronavirus symptom tracker app". Wired. 26 March 2020. Archived from the original on 5 May 2020. Retrieved 11 May 2020.
  3. "Coronavirus: Tracking app aims for one million downloads". BBC News. 25 March 2020. Archived from the original on 1 May 2020. Retrieved 11 May 2020.
  4. "Researchers release COVID-19 symptom tracker app". ScienceDaily. 5 May 2020. Archived from the original on 6 May 2020. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  5. "About this Research: FAQs: Will someone make money off my data?". covid.joinzoe.com. Covid Symptom Study. Archived from the original on 6 May 2020. Retrieved 12 May 2020.
  6. "King's College London launches Covid-19 symptom reporting app". Digital Health. 25 March 2020. Archived from the original on 3 May 2020. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  7. "Covid symptom tracker app suggests 350,000 could have untested coronavirus". The Independent. 26 April 2020. Archived from the original on 5 May 2020. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  8. Mayor, Susan (27 March 2020). "Covid-19: Researchers launch app to track spread of symptoms in the UK". The BMJ. 368: m1263. doi:10.1136/bmj.m1263. PMID 32220898. S2CID 214671164. Archived from the original on 10 April 2020. Retrieved 11 May 2020.
  9. "Coronavirus: Five things a Covid-19 symptom-tracking app tells us". BBC News. 23 May 2020. Archived from the original on 23 May 2020. Retrieved 23 May 2020.
  10. "Press release: Increased risk of COVID-19 among healthcare workers". covid.joinzoe.com. Archived from the original on 10 May 2020. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  11. Drew, David A.; Nguyen, Long H.; Steves, Claire J.; Menni, Cristina; Freydin, Maxim; Varsavsky, Thomas; Sudre, Carole H.; Cardoso, M. Jorge; Ourselin, Sebastien; Wolf, Jonathan; Spector, Tim D.; Chan, Andrew T. (5 May 2020). "Rapid implementation of mobile technology for real-time epidemiology of COVID-19". Science: eabc0473. doi:10.1126/science.abc0473. PMC 7200009. PMID 32371477. Archived from the original on 12 May 2020.
  12. Menni, Cristina; Valdes, Ana M.; Freidin, Maxim B.; Sudre, Carole H.; Nguyen, Long H.; Drew, David A.; Ganesh, Sajaysurya; Varsavsky, Thomas; Cardoso, M. Jorge; El-Sayed Moustafa, Julia S.; Visconti, Alessia; Hysi, Pirro; Bowyer, Ruth C. E.; Mangino, Massimo; Falchi, Mario; Wolf, Jonathan; Ourselin, Sebastien; Chan, Andrew T.; Steves, Claire J.; Spector, Tim D. (11 May 2020). "Real-time tracking of self-reported symptoms to predict potential COVID-19". Nature Medicine: 1–4. doi:10.1038/s41591-020-0916-2. ISSN 1546-170X. PMID 32393804. S2CID 218572997. Archived from the original on 12 May 2020. Retrieved 12 May 2020.

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