Research

Digital Contact Tracing for COVID-19: An Analysis of Strengths and Limitations

An article in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) analyzes the strengths and limitations of digital contact tracing for people infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) to help governments decide if and how they might adopt this technology.

Telehealth Tools Developed for Ebola Improve COVID-19 Care

Telemedicine tools developed at UVA Health to battle Ebola have huge potential in the fight against COVID-19, UVA experts report in a new scientific paper. The tools, they say, allow doctors to provide personal, high-quality care while conserving vital personal protective equipment and reducing infection risks.

Statistical Approach to COVID-19 Clinical Trials Aims to Accelerate Drug Approval Process

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have published a pair of studies in a COVID-19 special issue of the Harvard Data Science Review, freely available via open access, describing new methods for accelerating drug approvals during pandemics and for providing more accurate measures of the probabilities of success for clinical trials of vaccines and other anti-infective therapies.

Accurate Mapping of Human Travel Patterns with Global Smartphone Data

Understanding people's short- and long-distance travel patterns can inform economic development, urban planning, and responses to natural disasters, wars and conflicts, disease outbreaks like the COVID-19 pandemic, and more. A new global mapping method, developed by scientists from Boston Children's Hospital and the University of Oxford, provides global estimates of human mobility at much greater resolution than was possible before.

High Five! It's Possible to Create Proximity Online

Despite physical distance, it's possible to create proximity between family members located in different places. This is according to a study from Linköping University that has investigated how video calls bring family members together. The results show that proximity in video calls is established mainly by way of the body and the senses, e.g. by giving a digital high five.

New AI Diagnostic can Predict COVID-19 without Testing

Researchers at King's College London, Massachusetts General Hospital and health science company ZOE have developed an artificial intelligence diagnostic that can predict whether someone is likely to have COVID-19 based on their symptoms. Their findings are published today in Nature Medicine.

The COVID-19 pandemic reveals the potential of telehealth to improve care

Two new articles provide insights on the use of telehealth or virtual care in the age of COVID-19 and beyond, pointing to its value to not only prevent contagious diseases but also to provide access to effective and equitable care.

In a Nature Partner Journal's Digital Medicine perspective, Lee H. Schwamm, MD, Director of the Center for TeleHealth at Massachusetts General Hospital and Vice President of Virtual Care at Partners Healthcare, and his colleagues stress that virtual care, by collapsing the barriers of time and distance, is ideal for providing care that is patient-centered, lower cost, more convenient and with greater productivity than traditional methods for delivering care, especially during a pandemic.