IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - March/April 2021 - 68

Consumer Technology-Based Solutions for COVID-19

machine learning algorithms. For future studies,
more accurate results can be obtained by using
data processing algorithms on real COVID-19
patient's cough data. For now, in our proposed
solution, the audio signals which can be
recorded via an internal microphone placed into
the wrist-worn device can be processed to monitor the number of coughs at certain time
intervals.

Fatigue
Fatigue can be described as a lack of energy,
and it can be a symptom of many diseases.
COVID-19 patients are also suffering from fatigue.
Measuring fatigue can be a complex process, and
an easy method may not exist.
Instead of measuring fatigue directly, monitoring the physical activity during the daytime
may also give an idea about the level of fatigue.
Using a three-axis accelerometer to sense the
movements is a widely used method in the literature8, 9 and commercial products. Daily activity
durations are regularly recorded in the system.
In case of a decrease in motion due to fatigue,
this situation might be evaluated as a symptom
of an infection by the proposed system and the
user can be informed.
Anorexia
Anorexia as a symptom can simply be
described as a decreased appetite, which means
not feeling hungry or lacking the desire to eat.
Sometimes people do not even realize that they
have no appetite, so if this happens as a result of
a disease, it is important to detect this situation
and warn the person as soon as possible.
Anorexia cannot be measured directly; however,
by following the daily eating habits of the person, when any reduction in food intake occurs, it
can be concluded that the person shows
anorexia as a symptom.
In one related study, audio analysis of the
chewing sound was used to follow eating for
dietary monitoring; they used audio signals
which were recorded by placing a microphone
at the inner ear, besides a limited amount of
food was used at analysis.10 Based on another
methodology, the periods of eating are detected
by tracking wrist motion.11 To track the wrist
motion of the subjects, custom watch-like

devices which include accelerometer and gyroscope were used. In terms of application, it
seems more cost-effective to obtain daily nutritional durations by following wrist movements,
because the accelerometer could also be used
for the fatigue detection.

Anosmia
Anosmia can be defined as the loss of the
ability to detect one or more smells. Infection of
the upper respiratory tract because of COVID-19
results with olfactory disorders, which were
reported in many European countries. To detect
anosmia without taking notification from people
is very challenging.
In research on fragrance inhalation, it has
been shown that diastolic blood pressure (DBP)
of subjects is increased when they are exposed
to fragrance inhalation of grapefruit essential
oil.12 Thus, if the blood pressure changes can be
monitored after the release of grapefruit essential oil to the environment, the existence of the
anosmia can be detected. Besides many commercial watch type products on the market for
blood pressure measurement, different methods
are mentioned in the literature.13 For our proposed solution, which aims to measure all
required data from a single measurement site,
cuffless continuous measurement of blood pressure based on the pulse transit time (PTT)
method is convenient. PTT can be determined
from two pulse signals; such as photoplethysmography (PPG) and impedance plethysmography (IPG) signals.14
Dyspnea
Dyspnea, which is also described as shortness
of breath, is a feeling of not breathing well. One of
the other important symptoms caused by 2019nCoV is shortness of breath.
Shortness of breath because of 2019-nCoV
may not be seen in everyone, yet this situation
generally causes respiratory distress and if the
condition progresses, the patient should be
taken under medical supervision. If the person
has underlying ailments, the probability of having respiratory distress is even higher depending
on that situation.
The respiratory rate is an important criterion
for the evaluation of shortness of breath. The

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