US and Canadian Fitbit owners can opt-in to the study in the Discovery tab of the app under Assessments & Reports. They’ll be asked to fill out a short questionnaire and agree to let Fitbit aggregate the answers with fitness data to see if there’s any correlation between illness and the metrics they collect.
The goal is to see if wearables might be able to alert infected individuals of Covid-19 or flu before they are symptomatic or infect others. You have to be over 21 to opt-in to the study.
There’s obviously no guarantee that Fitbit will find a connection to early stages of illness and its wearables’ tracking but it’s good to see that it’s trying. There are millions of Fitbit devices in use around the world and the company is sitting on a lot of data, so it clearly feels it has an obligation to try and help in this time of pandemic.
Fitbit was acquired by Google last year, though both companies have not revealed what has changed behind the scenes. In this study Fitbit appears to be operating as its own entity still.
See our recommended Best Fitbit roundup for more details of the company’s activity trackers and smartwatches.
Henry is Tech Advisor’s Phones Editor, ensuring he and the team covers and reviews every smartphone worth knowing about for readers and viewers all over the world. He spends a lot of time moving between different handsets and shouting at WhatsApp to support multiple devices at once.
