A good news though in the tech world is the fact that a set of Researchers in Chicago were able to devise a new wearable device which is able to track symptoms of Coronavirus and possibly alerting health authorities of the new cases even before the patient are confirmed to be sick.

The new wearable device is soft and can be placed right on the throat which in turn monitors a person’s breathing patterns, heart rate, body temperature and cough as well as other important things. The device in turn transfers its data to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) protected cloud where it can be monitored.

According to the developers of the technology, its able to detect COVID-19 symptoms from home and identify sick patients before they ever set foot in a hospital. In their words, the researchers made it known that “these sensors have the potential to unlock information that will protect frontline medical workers and patients alike — informing interventions in a timely manner to reduce the risk of transmission and increase the likelihood of better outcomes,” said Arun Jayaraman, the research scientist at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab who led the algorithm development, in a press release.

“This opens up new telemedicine strategies, as we won’t have to bring in patients for monitoring,” Jayaraman said. “Physicians can potentially review the patients’ data for hours, days, or weeks immediately, through a customized graphical user interface to a cloud data management system that is being set up for this purpose, to see an overall image of how the patient is doing.”

The researchers also made it known the device was developed to stay right in a single position when placed on the body. It stays at a person’s throat by sticking to “Suprasternal notch” where it can easily track max number of coronavirus symptoms all at once.

“Nobody has ever collected this type of data before,” said John A. Rogers, a faculty expert at Northwestern University’s Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science who led the technology development, in the press release. “Earlier detection is always better … for patients who have contracted the disease … the data [is] a mechanism to track the progression and/or the effects of treatments.”

The device is said to already being produced at an in-house production facility in Chicago and the deployment is expected through a company set up by the group of researchers.