Software:COVID Symptom Study

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Short description: COVID-19 mobile research app
COVID Symptom Study
Covid Symptom Study App icon.png
Developer(s)
Operating systemAndroid, iOS
TypeCOVID-19 apps
Website{{{1}}}

The COVID Symptom Study, formerly the COVID Symptom Tracker,[1] is a COVID-19 epidemiological research mobile 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, with funding granted by the UK government until April 2022.[2] 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.

From May 2022 the name of the study began to be changed to the Zoe Health Study, although (As of June 2022) the app continues to use the COVID Symptom Study name.[3]

Zoe Global Limited also provides in the US and UK, as a separate product, a system that allows people to analyse their unique gut, blood fat and blood sugar responses to food, saying that it enables people to "make the best decisions for your own health & weight goals".[4]

Timeline

The idea for an app to track the spread of COVID-19 came from professor Tim Spector, an epidemiologist at King's College London. In the early months of 2020 he used his startup company ZOE Global Limited to build the Covid Symptom Tracker app in collaboration with King's College London and Guy's and St Thomas' hospitals.[5][6] Initially the project was UK-based, where there is open membership.[7] In the United States at a later date[when?] various cohorts from existing studies were added, including from the Nurses' Health Study; this research was in collaboration with Massachusetts General Hospital.[7] 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."[8]

At the end of April 2020, the project received assistance from the Department of Health and Social Care which allowed it to offer up to 10,000 COVID-19 tests each week to participants.[9]

The app was released as a trial for 5,000 twins,[10] using patients involved in other Zoe research projects.[5] It was later expanded for use by non-twins.[5] The app entered the UK App Store and Play Store on 24 March, and the US App and Play stores on 29 March.[7]

In August 2020, the UK government made a grant of £2 million to support data collection by the project,[11][12] and by August 2021, government funding amounted to £5m.[13] In May 2021, the associated company name was changed from ZOE Global Limited to ZOE Limited.[14]

Government funding (latterly via the UK Health Security Agency) ceased at the end of March 2022.[15][2]

In May 2022, ZOE announced that the name of the study would change to ZOE Health Study, to reflect its use in logging symptoms extending beyond those of COVID-19.[16]

Uptake

Covid Symptom Tracker screenshot.PNG

Within 24 hours of being available in the UK, the app had been downloaded over 1 million times.[5] A paper using data collected in the four weeks up to 21 April 2020 analysed symptoms from 2.45 million people in the UK and 168,000 in the US.[17] As of May 2020, the app had been downloaded by over 3 million people,[7] including 2 million Britons.[18] By 17 July the number exceeded 4 million.[19]

The number of active app users is not published. In late October 2020, Spector said that a million users were reporting symptoms most days.[20] Researchers who analysed data collected in the last three months of 2020 said they used more than 65 million health reports from 1.76 million users.[21] By July 2021, the app had been used by 4.6 million people in Britain and about a quarter of that number continued to self-report every day.[13]

Research

The COVID Symptom Study requires users to give their location.[18] Users give personal information including age, gender and location, and report if they have any underlying chronic conditions.[22] They also answer questions related to common COVID-19 symptoms, and input any illness or symptoms that they have,[7][5] as well as stating whether they have been tested for COVID-19.[22] Beginning in May 2020, a random sample of users is selected (on the first day they report symptoms) for a swab test.[9] Researchers then use statistical analysis to determine which symptoms are likely to indicate COVID-19,[18] rather than the common cold or seasonal influenza.[5] The app does not have any contact tracing functionality.[7]

Based on the data inputted into the app, researchers estimated that when cases peaked on 1 April 2020, 2.1 million people in the UK aged between 20 and 69 may have had COVID-19, and that as of 23 May 2020, 280,000 people in that age range currently had symptoms consistent with COVID-19.[23] The study also estimates the risk level to health workers, compared with the general public.[24] Research based on the app was described in papers in Science on 5 May 2020[25] and in Nature on 11 May 2020.[17] Using data from the app, researchers were able to identify six distinct types of COVID-19 and forecast which initial symptoms were more likely to lead to severe illnesses.[26][27]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Chan, Andrew; Spector, Tim (11 May 2020). "Coronavirus: research reveals way to predict infection – without a test" (in en). The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-research-reveals-way-to-predict-infection-without-a-test-138284. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "ZOE government funding has been cancelled, but we’re not stopping". ZOE Covid Study. 15 March 2022. https://covid.joinzoe.com/post/government-funding-announcement. 
  3. ↑ "COVID Symptom Study App" (in en). https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.joinzoe.covid_zoe&hl=en_GB&gl=US. 
  4. ↑ "ZOE - Understand how your body responds to food". https://joinzoe.com/. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 "The inside story of the UK's biggest coronavirus symptom tracker app". Wired. 26 March 2020. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/covid-symptom-tracker-app-coronavirus-uk. Retrieved 11 May 2020. 
  6. ↑ "Coronavirus: Tracking app aims for one million downloads". BBC News. 25 March 2020. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52033210. 
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 "Researchers release COVID-19 symptom tracker app". ScienceDaily. 5 May 2020. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200505105325.htm. 
  8. ↑ "About this Research: FAQs: Will someone make money off my data?". Covid Symptom Study. https://covid.joinzoe.com/about#faqs. 
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 "COVID-19 testing for app users: your questions answered". 30 April 2020. https://covid.joinzoe.com/post/covid-testing-uk. 
  10. ↑ "King's College London launches Covid-19 symptom reporting app". Digital Health. 25 March 2020. https://www.digitalhealth.net/2020/03/kings-college-london-covid-19-app/. 
  11. ↑ "Expansion of national testing study will offer new COVID-19 insights" (in en). Department of Health and Social Care. 19 August 2020. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/huge-boost-to-national-testing-study-will-offer-new-covid-19-insights. 
  12. ↑ Crouch, Hannah (2020-08-19). "ZOE Covid-19 Symptom Study app awarded £2m government grant" (in en-GB). https://www.digitalhealth.net/2020/08/zoe-covid-19-symptom-study-app-government-grant/. 
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Murgia, Madhumita (31 July 2021). "Tim Spector: the data explorer who uncovered vital clues to Covid". https://www.ft.com/content/b1b60f54-5d32-4644-a5f9-27af3c1704c7. 
  14. ↑ "ZOE Limited". https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/10902884. 
  15. ↑ "COVID-19 surveillance and immunity studies up to March 2022" (in en). UK Health Security Agency. 8 June 2022. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-surveillance/covid-19-surveillance-and-immunity-studies-up-to-march-2022. 
  16. ↑ "Introducing the ZOE Health Study". 5 May 2022. https://covid.joinzoe.com/post/introducing-the-zoe-health-study. 
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Menni, Cristina; Valdes, Ana M.; Freidin, Maxim B.; Sudre, Carole H.; Nguyen, Long H.; Drew, David A.; Ganesh, Sajaysurya; Varsavsky, Thomas et al. (11 May 2020). "Real-time tracking of self-reported symptoms to predict potential COVID-19" (in en). Nature Medicine 26 (7): 1037–1040. doi:10.1038/s41591-020-0916-2. ISSN 1546-170X. PMID 32393804. 
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 "Covid symptom tracker app suggests 350,000 could have untested coronavirus". The Independent. 26 April 2020. https://inews.co.uk/news/health/covid-symptom-tracker-app-suggests-350000-could-have-untested-coronavirus-2550264. 
  19. ↑ Wise, Jacqui (2020-07-20). "Covid-19: Study reveals six clusters of symptoms that could be used as a clinical prediction tool" (in en). BMJ 370: m2911. doi:10.1136/bmj.m2911. ISSN 1756-1833. PMID 32690476. 
  20. ↑ Weekly update (YouTube). Tim Spector. 29 October 2020.
  21. ↑ Steves, Claire (1 February 2021). "No evidence for changes in symptoms from new coronavirus variant". https://covid.joinzoe.com/post/no-evidence-for-changes-in-symptoms-from-new-coronavirus-variant. 
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 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. https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.m1263. Retrieved 11 May 2020. 
  23. ↑ "Coronavirus: Five things a Covid-19 symptom-tracking app tells us". BBC News. 23 May 2020. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52770313. 
  24. ↑ "Press release: Increased risk of COVID-19 among healthcare workers". https://covid.joinzoe.com/post/healthcare-workers. 
  25. ↑ Drew, David A.; Nguyen, Long H.; Steves, Claire J.; Menni, Cristina; Freydin, Maxim; Varsavsky, Thomas; Sudre, Carole H.; Cardoso, M. Jorge et al. (5 May 2020). "Rapid implementation of mobile technology for real-time epidemiology of COVID-19". Science 368 (6497): 1362–1367. doi:10.1126/science.abc0473. PMID 32371477. Bibcode: 2020Sci...368.1362D. 
  26. ↑ Sudre, Carole H.; Lee, Karla; Ni Lochlainn, Mary; Varsavsky, Thomas; Murray, Benjamin; Graham, Mark S.; Menni, Cristina; Modat, Marc et al. (2020-06-16). "Symptom clusters in Covid19: A potential clinical prediction tool from the COVID Symptom study app" (in en). Science Advances 7 (12): eabd4177. doi:10.1126/sciadv.abd4177. PMID 33741586. PMC 7978420. https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10125064/. 
  27. ↑ "Six distinct 'types' of COVID-19 identified" (in en-GB). 2020-07-17. https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/six-distinct-types-of-covid-19-identified. 

External links




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