Patent US10902955

Detecting COVID-19 using surrogates

A triage system that determines whether a user is likely to have contracted a disease based on sensor data received from a user device (e.g., a smartphone or activity tracker). Each symptom is identified by comparing sensor data to a predetermined baseline and comparing the difference to a predetermined symptom threshold. Because direct measurement of symptoms using the sensors available to the user may not be feasible or sufficiently accurate, the triage system also uses surrogates the identify certain symptoms. For example, a fever may be identified using heart data, a cough or shortness of breath may be identified by analyzing recorded sound, fatigue may be identified by analyzing the movement of the user device, and loss of smell or taste may be identified by recording sound and using speech detection algorithms to identify phrases in the recorded sound indicative of loss of smell or taste.