Empowering home health monitoring of Covid-19 patients with smartwatch position and fitness tracking

The current Covid-19 pandemic has limited direct contacts among people, since the virus is usually widespread by the drops of saliva. Then, this world outbreak has brought the need to track patients' positions, especially to verify the respect of quarantine regulations for infected people and for their strict contacts. Moreover, the conditions of elderly and high risk patients should be continuously monitored, minimising, at the same time, the exposure of general practitioners. Among the several solutions available on the market, telemedicine seems to be an optimal support for remote monitoring, limiting the contacts between doctors and patients, and fast reaction to worsening of clinical conditions. Telemedicine platforms can also integrate Global Navigation Satellite System technology embedded in wrist devices, to add new functionalities, useful even when the pandemic is over. In this paper, we present the smartwatch integration in the already consolidated E@syCare telemedicine platform, with the aim of tracking patients' positions and monitoring outdoor and indoor fitness sessions. The smartwatch, equipped with WearOS, should have GPS receiver, heart rate sensor and accelerometer and the developed application installed. It randomly collects positions, for patients subjected to quarantine regulations, generating an alarm in case of violation. From the GUI, the user can start fitness sessions, independently or according to the care plan. Positions and fitness sessions are downloaded by the handheld device, and become available for further analysis by the doctors. Nowadays, the platform has been already delivered to 60 patients with the support of European Space Agency (ESA).