Fitbit might be able to predict real-time influenza before outbreaks

Your Fitbit may be able to detect influenza-like diseases before you do, as discovered by a recent research published in The Lancet Digital Health journal.

By analysing one’s heart rate and sleep duration, wearables like Fitbit can identify abnormality in a user data through their weekly average heart rate and weekly average sleep. If the heart rate is above overall average and the amount of sleep is not below overall average, then the data is considered abnormal.

The researchers have found improvement in real-time surveillance with the help of Fitbit wearables as traditional surveillance usually take up to three weeks to report. This research was done with data from 200,000 users in a few states in the U.S., in which 60% of them were female and had the subjects average age was 43 years old.

If we could really rely on wearables to detect diseases like influenza, then perhaps it could help the health practitioners prevent outbreaks at an earlier stage.